Scrupulousness and cautious self-restraint—how well they befit you. (1)

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Aḥmad al-Kattānī said: “Al-Khaṭīb’s shaykh Abū al-Qāsim ʿUbayd Allah al-Azharī heard hadith from him in the year 412 AH.

His teacher al-Barqānī also wrote down traditions from him and transmitted them on his authority.

He studied jurisprudence with Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī and Abū Naṣr ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, and he followed the school of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. (2)”

I say: He spoke the truth, for al-Khaṭīb explicitly declared in the reports dealing with the divine attributes that they are to be accepted as they have come, without figurative interpretation.

The ḥāfiẓ Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said in his Dhayl: “Al-Khaṭīb was awe-inspiring and dignified, trustworthy and exacting, an authority; his handwriting was elegant, his precision exceptional, and his speech eloquent. With him the line of great ḥuffāẓ came to its close. He travelled to al-Shām on pilgrimage, met Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Quḍāʿī in Ṣūr, and read the Ṣaḥīḥ to Karīma al-Marwaziyya in five days. He returned to Baghdad, but after the turmoil caused by al-Basāsīrī—because of the unrest of the times—he left again for al-Shām in 451 AH and took up residence there. He would visit Jerusalem and then go back to Ṣūr until 462 AH, after which he set out for Ṭarābulus, then for Aleppo, then for al-Raḥba, and finally for Baghdad, which he entered in Dhū al-Ḥijjah. He taught hadith in Aleppo and elsewhere. (3)

Al-Samʿānī further related: “I heard the preacher Masʿūd ibn Muḥammad in Marw, and I heard al-Faḍl ibn ʿUmar al-Nasawī say: ‘I was in the congregational mosque of Ṣūr with Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb when an ʿAlawī entered with dinars tucked in his sleeve. He said: ‘Spend this gold on your needs.’ Al-Khaṭīb frowned…’”