and its jurisprudence, deriving rulings from the Book and the Sunnah, proficient in a host of sciences, and one who lived by his learning. We have never seen anyone who combined such intelligence, rapid recall, generosity of spirit, and devotion as he did. In literature and poetry his talent was wide-ranging and his reach long; I have not seen anyone who could improvise verse more quickly than he. His poetry is copious—I gathered it in alphabetical order.

Abū al-Qāsim Saʿid said: “His father, Abū ʿUmar, was one of the viziers of al-Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿĀmir, the administrator of the realm of al-Muʾayyad bi-Llāh ibn al-Mustanṣir al-Marwānī. Later he served as vizier to al-Muẓaffar, and Abū Muḥammad (Ibn Ḥazm) was vizier to al-Mustazhir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Hishām. He then cast aside that career, turned to the religious sciences, took up logic and mastered it, then abandoned it.”

I say: He did not abandon it until he had planted within himself certain notions and a deviation from the Sunnah.

Saʿid continued: “He then applied himself to the Islamic sciences until he attained therein what no one in al-Andalus before him had achieved.” (1)

Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabī launched an attack on Abū Muḥammad in his book Al-Qawāṣim wa-l-ʿAwāṣim (2) and on the Ẓāhirīs in general, saying: “They are a trivial faction that vaulted to a station not theirs and spoke words we did not understand (3), having received them (4) from their brothers the Khārijites when they rejected arbitration for ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—at Ṣiffīn, declaring: ‘Judgment belongs to Allah alone.’”

And he was the first