—no one was better than him.

Prominent elders from among our own teachers used to attend his gatherings and receive narrations from him. ⦗1⦘

Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir said: “His father, Hibat Allāh, served as vizier to the Commander of the Faithful al-Qāʾim, and his uncle Ḥusayn held the office of Chief Judge in Baghdad …” until he said, “He was born in Shaʿbān of the year twenty-one. Thus it stands here: ‘the year one-and-twenty’. ⦗2⦘”

Al-Humaydī said: “Whenever I consulted al-Khaṭīb about anything he would refer me to the written source, saying, ‘Let me look it up.’ Yet whenever I consulted Ibn Mākūlā about something he would answer from memory, as though he were reading out of a book. ⦗3⦘”

Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Marzūq said: “When al-Khaṭīb learned that Ibn Mākūlā had faulted him in the book al-Muʾtanif and had even composed a separate treatise on the matter, Ibn Mākūlā came to him. Al-Khaṭīb questioned him about it, but he denied it, would not admit it, and persisted, saying, ‘That never crossed my mind.’

It was also said that the treatise was hidden in his sleeve, and that when al-Khaṭīb died he brought it out. It is the work entitled Mustamarr al-Awhām. ⦗4⦘

Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī said: “I heard Abū Isḥāq al-Ḥabbāl praising Abū Naṣr ibn Mākūlā and commending him, saying, ‘He entered Egypt dressed in the garb of scribes, and we paid him no heed; but once we came to know him, we realized that he was one of the scholars of this discipline.’ ⦗5⦘”