upright, trustworthy, self-restrained, and a long-standing seeker of knowledge.”

Abū ʿAlī al-Ghassānī transmitted from him and noted that the shaykh’s mind became confused in his last days (1).

Ibn Bashkuwāl (2) said: “Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿAttāb informed us about him and told me, ‘Poverty overtook Abū Ḥafṣ toward the end of his life, so he was reduced to asking people for help.’”

He added: “I read, in the handwriting of Abū Marwān al-Ṭubnī, the following report: Abū Ḥafṣ al-Zahrawī told me, ‘I had bound together eight loads of books to move them to another location, but before I could finish the task the Berbers plundered them.’”

He passed away in Ṣafar 454 AH, at the age of ninety-two.

106 – Al-Maʾmūn, Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Hawwārī *

The king of Toledo: Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā, son of the city’s former ruler, Emir Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿĀmir ibn Dhī al-Nūn al-Hawwārī, an Andalusian.

His father seized the city sometime after 420 AH, renouncing obedience to the Marwānid Umayyads. Al-Maʾmūn succeeded him in 435 AH (3), and his rule lasted twenty-five years. He devoted himself to pleasure and dissipation, imposed heavy exactions on his subjects, and entered into a truce.