ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣāʿidī.
He was born in 410 AH.
He studied ḥadith with his grandfather Abū al-ʿAlāʾ Ṣāʿid, with Abū Bakr al-Ḥīrī, Abū Saʿd al-Ṣayrafī, and their contemporaries.
Among those who transmitted from him were Zāhir and Wajīh—the two sons of al-Shahhāmī—ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Furāwī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn Zāhir, and others.
Ibn al-Samʿānī remarked: “In his later years he became fanatically attached to his school of law, which estranged the scholars and stirred up the various factions until they were being cursed from the pulpits, whereupon Niẓām al-Mulk deposed him.”
He dictated teaching sessions and was known as “Shaykh al-Islām.”
He passed away in Shaʿbān, 482 AH.
5 – al-Thaqafī, al-Qāsim ibn al-Faḍl ibn Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd*
The shaykh, distinguished scholar, long-lived authority, foremost transmitter of his era, head of Isfahān and its trusted figure, Abū
Kataib Aʿlam al-Akhiyar, no. 282; al-Tabaqat al-Saniyya, no. 324; Shadharat al-Dhahab, 1089; al-Fawaʾid al-Bahiyya, pp. 34–35.
(1) The word is vocalised with ḍamma on the initial fa and fatḥa on the ra, as in al-Ansab, whereas Yaqut puts a fatḥa on the fa. The nisba derives from Farawa, a small frontier town near Khwarazm, also called Ribat Farawa, built by the governor of Khurasan ʿAbd Allah b. Tahir during the caliphate of al-Maʾmun.
(2) The great vizier Abu ʿAli al-Hasan b. ʿAli b. Ishaq al-Tusi, founder of the Nizamiyya madrasa in Baghdad; his biography will appear under no. 53 in this volume.
(*) Sources consulted: al-Waraqa, fol. 76b; al-Taqyid, fols. 192b–193a; Duwal al-Islam, 2/18; al-Ibar, 3/325; al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, 4/1227; Ibn Qadi Shuhba, al-Iʿlam, Events, p. 489; Kashf al-Zunun, pp. 55, 522; Shadharat al-Dhahab, 3/393; al-Risala al-Mustatrafa, p. 77; Tarikh al-Adab al-ʿArabi, 6/178.