and al-Silafī, the preacher of Mosul, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Bājisrāʾī (1), Saʿd Allāh ibn al-Dajjājī, and several others.

Al-Samʿānī said: “Upright, reliable, devout, and an assiduous instructor; between the two evening prayers he would recite a sabʿ—that is, one-seventh of the Quran (2)—and he was a man endowed with extraordinary favors.”

Ibn Nāṣir likewise remarked: “He was graced with miracles.”

Another observer stated: “He was the imam of the Ibn Jarda Mosque in the Ḥarīm (3). For many years he taught the blind the Quran for Allah’s sake, supplicating for them and spending on them. Ibn al-Najjār records in his History that the number of blind persons whom Abū Manṣūr al-Khayyāṭ taught reached seventy thousand, adding, ‘This I saw in the handwriting of Abū Naṣr al-Yūnārtī, the ḥāfiẓ.’”

I say: this is impossible. Plainly he meant to write “seventy persons,” but the pen ran ahead of him and produced “thousand” (4). And whoever teaches the Quran to seventy blind people has already done abundant good.

Al-Silafī relates from ʿAlī ibn al-Aysar al-ʿUkbarī: “I never saw a larger crowd than the funeral of Abū Manṣūr. A Jew who witnessed it was so overwhelmed (5) that he embraced Islam.”

Abū Manṣūr ibn Khayrūn said: “I have never seen a day like the one on which the funeral prayer was offered for Abū Manṣūr, because of the sheer multitude of people.”