I add: His father too was a man of letters, and he studied under him as well as under Saʿid ibn al-Hasan.
Al-Humaydi (1) said, “He is an authority in language and Arabic philology, a memorizer of both, despite his blindness. In that field he produced voluminous compilations, and in addition he enjoyed a fair share of poetry and literary composition.”
Judge Saʿid ibn Ahmad dated his death to the year 458 AH, and said that he lived to be about sixty (2).
Al-Yasaʿ ibn Hazm remarked, “He was a shuʿūbī who preferred the non-Arabs to the Arabs” (3).
Abū Zayd al-Suhaylī censured him in al-Rawḍ (4), saying, “In al-Muḥkam and elsewhere he tripped over errors that would draw blood from the very soles (5); he slipped in ways that lead one onto the path of those gone astray, to the point that he even claimed regarding the jumar that they are the stones hurled at ʿArafah (6).”
(1) Jadhwat al-Muqtabis, p. 311.
(2) Al-Sila 2:418; Inbaʾ al-Ruwat 2:227. Another view puts his death in 448 AH, but the date cited by the author is the correct one; see Wafayat al-Aʿyan 3:330–331.
(3) See Lisan al-Mizan 4:206.
(4) The reference is to al-Rawd al-Unuf, a commentary on Ibn Hisham’s Sirah. Its author, Abu Zayd (also known as Abu al-Qasim and Abu al-Hasan) al-Suhayli—ʿAbd al-Rahman b. ʿAbd Allah b. Ahmad al-Andalusi—the grammarian and prolific writer, died in 581 AH. See al-Ibar 4:244 and Shadharat al-Dhahab 4:271–272.
(5) al-Azall: the fleshy pad at the base of a finger.
(6) See al-Rawd al-Unuf 2:128. Ibn Hajar later excused this statement in Lisan al-Mizan 4:205–206, observing—after quoting al-Suhayli—that the one who erred is excused because he was neither a jurist nor had he performed the pilgrimage; this does not imply that he was mistaken in the field in which he excelled, namely language.