He would fasten a waist-wrap around himself, and when he was at home he would take off his outer clothes and sit, saying, “I did not enter the judiciary until it had become incumbent upon me (1).”

Abū ʿAlī al-Ṣadafī said, “He was a God-fearing ascetic.”

Regarding jurisprudence, people used to say, “If the Shāfiʿī school were to disappear, he could dictate it in full from memory (2).”

The judge Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī took notes from him.

ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Anmāṭī said, “The Syrian Chief Judge was of exemplary conduct and never smiled in his courtroom (3).”

I say: He arrived in Baghdad in 420 AH. He was one of the storehouses of fiqh, and he authored al-Bayān fī Uṣūl al-Dīn, a work in which he follows the approach of the early generations (4).

Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ābanūsī said, “The Syrian Chief Judge had two bags. In one he kept his turban and a fine cotton shirt; when he went out he would wear them. The other bag held broken bread: he would pour some into a bowl and live on it (5)(6).”

On his authority it is also related that he said, “I would be sinning if I did not undertake the judgeship,” and Abū Muḥammad al-Tamīmī—