Whenever he turned to ʿilm al-ṣūfiyyah, the science of Sufism, and to explaining the various spiritual states, he would move all who were present to tears (1). In a single day he might deliver a number of lessons, each one running to several folios, and he never hesitated over a single word.

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Ismāʿīl (2) recorded this portrait of him, and even far more.

He died on the twenty-fifth of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir in the year 478 AH.

He was first buried in his own house. Years later his body was transferred to the Ḥusayn Cemetery and laid to rest beside his father. On that occasion his pulpit was dismantled, the markets were closed, poems of lament were composed, and about four hundred of his students smashed their inkwells and pens and observed a year-long mourning period. For an entire year the kerchiefs were removed from (3) people’s heads—no one dared to cover his—and the students roamed the town mourning him, giving full voice to their cries and grief (4).

I say: This was a Persian custom, not the practice of the scholars who follow the tradition (5).

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bākharzī said of him in al-Dumya (6): “In jurisprudence he possesses the fiqh of al-Shāfiʿī, in literature the refinement of al-Aṣmaʿī, and in eloquent exhortation the beauty of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī” (7),