Were I ever appointed commander of an army,
I would wage war with questions alone;
for men will scatter before a single query,
though they have stood their ground against spear-points of steel.

238 – Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh ʿAbd al-Sayyid ibn Muḥammad al-Baghdādī*

The Imām, erudite scholar, and leading Shāfiʿī authority, Abū Naṣr ʿAbd al-Sayyid ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad (1) ibn Jaʿfar al-Baghdādī, the jurist better known as Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, author of the works al-Shāmil (The Comprehensive), al-Kāmil (The Complete), and Tadhkirat al-ʿĀlim wa-l-Ṭarīq al-Sālim (The Scholar’s Reminder and the Safe Path).

Birth: 400 AH.

He received ḥadith from Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Faḍl al-Qaṭṭān and Abū ʿAlī ibn Shādhān.

Narrators from him include his son—the ḥadith transmitter Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī—together with Abū Naṣr al-Ghāzī, Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Taymī, Ismāʿīl al-Samarqandī, and others.

Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said: “Abū Naṣr rivaled Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, and people used to say that he was better acquainted with the school than Abū Isḥāq.”

Students undertook the journey to study with both of them.

Abū Naṣr was reliable, authoritative, devout, and virtuous. He taught at the Niẓāmiyya after Abū Isḥāq, lost his sight toward the end of his life, and transmitted the booklet of Ibn ʿArafah through Ibn al-Faḍl (2).