and he had recited it to Ibn Mujāhid (1). I also met Abū al-Qāsim ʿUmar ibn Taʿwīdh, one of al-Shiblī’s followers, who said: “I saw Abū Bakr al-Shiblī pass by a greengrocer calling out over his produce, ‘O you who are fasting, here are greens of every kind!’ Al-Shiblī kept repeating the cry and weeping, then he began to chant:

My two close friends, if this heart’s distress should last,
As I see it, it will swiftly bring death.
O cup-bearer of the gathering, do not forget me,
And you, lady of the bower, sing a ramal strain.
There once was a thing men called ‘delight’;
Long ago we heard of it—what has become of it?

Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī said: “I completed one full reading of the Qur’an in the riwāyah of Qālūn under Rizq Allāh al-Tamīmī. He was the leading and most eminent scholar of Baghdad, and he used to say, ‘Every faction claims me as its own.’

“I heard him say as well: ‘It is unbecoming of you to take knowledge from us, then, when you mention us, fail to ask Allah’s mercy (2) for us.’

Aḥmad ibn Salāmah narrated to us, from Aḥmad ibn Ṭāriq, who heard Abū al-Karam al-Shahrazūrī say: “I heard Rizq Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb relate:

‘I entered Samarkand while Sultan Malikshāh was residing there. I found its people transmitting the book An-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh by Hibat Allāh the Qur’anic exegete—my maternal grandfather—through a chain of five men. I said to them, “The book is with me; its author is my grandfather, and I have heard it from him directly. However, I will not recite it to each of you for less than one hundred dinars.”

‘Before noon, five hundred dinars had reached me, so they heard the book from me. When I returned, I entered Isfahan and dictated it there (3).’