of Interpretation; he came from a family of merchants. His ancestral home was Sāwa (1).
He attached himself to the master Abū Isḥāq al-Thaʿlabī (2), narrating copiously from him, and he studied Arabic under Abū al-Ḥasan al-Quhūnduzī (3), who was blind.
Among those from whom he heard hadith were Abū Ṭāhir ibn Maḥmish, the judge Abū Bakr al-Ḥīrī, Abū Ibrāhīm Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Wāʿiẓ, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Muzakkī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥamdān al-Naṣrawī, Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Najjār, and many others.
Those who transmitted from him include Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar al-Arghiyānī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn Muḥammad al-Khuwwārī, and a number of others, the most eminent of whom was al-Khuwwārī.
He authored three Qurʾanic commentaries: al-Basīṭ (The Extensive), al-Wasīṭ (The Intermediate), and al-Wajīz (4) (The Concise). Using these very titles, al-Ghazālī later named his own three works in jurisprudence.
Abū al-Ḥasan also produced the transmitted work Asbāb al-Nuzūl (5) (Occasions of Revelation), al-Taḥbīr fī al-Asmāʾ al-Ḥusnā (6) (An Embellishment on the Most Beautiful Names), and a Commentary on the Dīwān of al-Mutanabbī (7).
He enjoyed an exceptionally wide command of the Arabic language.
(1) A town situated between al-Rayy and Hamadhan.
(2) The reference is to the Qur’an commentator Abu Ishaq Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Naysaburi al-Tha‘labi (d. 427 AH/1035 CE); his biography appeared earlier in vol. 17, no. 291.
(3) In the base manuscript the nisba is vocalised with damma on both the qaf and the ha’, and al-Ansab records it the same way. Yaqut, however, reads it with fatha on the qaf, ha’, and dal, deriving it from Qahandaz—the walled inner quarter of several cities. In Bughyat al-Wu‘at the word is corrupted to “al-qahandari” with an added ra’.
(4) Al-Wajiz was printed in 1305 AH (1887 CE) in the margin of al-Tafsir al-Munir li-Ma‘alim al-Tanzil, also known as Marah Labid li-Kashf Ma‘na Qur’an Majid by Shaykh Muhammad Nawawi al-Jawi.
(5) The work was first published in Egypt in 1315 AH (1897–98 CE) and re-edited with critical apparatus by Sayyid Ahmad Saqr in 1970; see Sarkis, Mu‘jam al-Matbu‘at, p. 1905.
(6) Both Wafayat al-A‘yan and al-Subki’s Tabaqat call it: al-tahbir fi sharh al-asma’ al-husna.
(7) It was lithographed in Bombay in 1271 AH (1855 CE) under the care of Abd al-Husayn Husam al-Din, published again in Berlin 1858–61 by Professor Dieterici, and later reprinted in offset by Maktabat al-Mathna.