would push him from their circles and drive him out of their realms until they finally deposited him—his tracks now all but lost—in a small settlement(1) on the barren outskirts of Lablah.

Yet even there he neither flinched nor turned back. He went on spreading his learning among the desert people who came to him, ordinary seekers from the youngest ranks of students who feared no reproach for keeping his company. He related hadith to them, taught them law, and reviewed lessons with them until his written works amounted to a camel-load(2). Most of those writings never left that backcountry, for the jurists showed little interest in them; indeed, some were burned in Seville and torn up publicly.

His gravest fault(3)—so they alleged before the fair-minded—was his ignorance of the etiquette of scholarship, the most intricate of crafts(4)… and his falling short in that regard despite the strength with which he plunged into its depths(5). Added to this, he was not wholly free from lapses of judgment, or from moments when the proofs he knew slipped his mind at first encounter, until a question stirred him; then a sea of knowledge would gush forth from him, undisturbed by the drawing of buckets.

What further stoked resentment toward him(6) was his partisanship for the Umayyad princes, past and present, and his conviction of the soundness of their leadership, to the point that he was branded a nasibi(7).

I say: Among his works is a book entitled “The Jews’ and Christians’ Alteration of the Torah and the Gospel.”(8) He had acquired logic—may Allah keep it far from sound knowledge—from Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Madhḥijī, pursued it deeply, and it shook him on several issues. For my own part, I retain an affection for Abū Muḥammad