and his brother, al-Ṣāʾin Hibat Allah, together with several others.

Ibn ʿAsākir said: “He was reliable, prolific in transmission, and possessed original notebooks written by professional copyists. He was firmly committed to the Sunnah. The cause of his adherence to the Sunnah was his tutor Abū ʿImrān al-Ṣiqillī and his abundant attendance at hadith sessions… until he went on to say:

‘His shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kattānī heard from him, and I myself narrated from him at length. He told me that when I was born he asked my father, “What name and kunya have you given him?” My father replied, “Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī.” He responded, “You have taken both my name and my kunya.”

Abū al-Qāsim al-Sumaysāṭī once said to me—or, he said, Abū al-Qāsim ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ said to me—“I have never seen anyone named ʿAlī whose kunya was Abū al-Qāsim except that he enjoyed a long life.” He also mentioned that he once led a funeral prayer and pronounced four takbīrs.’

He continued: ‘The ruler of Egypt sent a letter to his father censuring him for that, whereupon his father told him, “Do not lead another funeral prayer after this.”’

I (Ibn ʿAsākir) say: The officials of Egypt were Rāfiḍī Shīʿa.

He then said: ‘His funeral was grand. He stipulated that Jamāl al-Islām Abū al-Ḥasan the jurist should lead the prayer over him, that a mound be raised over his grave, and that no Shīʿī should be involved with it. I attended his burial. He died on the twenty-fourth of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir in the year 508 AH and was buried in the Fakhriyya cemetery near the musallā.’

In that same year also passed away: the long-lived and pious Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Fatḥān al-Shahrazūrī al-Baghdādī (1), who narrated a single session from Ibn Bishrān and was eighty-five years old; the transmitter Abū ʿAbd Allah Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Khawlānī al-Andalusī (2), aged ninety; Abū al-Waḥsh Subayʿ ibn al-Musallam al-Dimashqī, the Qur’an reciter; and Abū