and thirty. On that trip he encountered Ibn Hushaym and Ibn Nafīs, and I myself jotted down a number of useful notes from him. He had the Qur’anic readings by heart, was truthful, precise, knowledgeable, and already advanced in years. Some even said he knew the variant readings as easily as he knew the Opening Chapter (1).

230 – Ghayth ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, Abū al-Faraj al-Armanāzī *
A ḥadith scholar and teacher, Abū al-Faraj al-Armanāzī—later called al-Ṣūrī—served as the preacher of Ṣūr and its principal transmitter of ḥadith.

He heard ḥadith from Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb, ʿAlī ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Hāshimī; in Damascus from Abū Naṣr ibn Ṭalāb and others; in Tinnīs from Ramaḍān ibn ʿAlī; and further in Egypt and along the Frontier. He wrote extensively and produced a draft History of Ṣūr. He was reliable and possessed an elegant hand in calligraphy.

Those who narrated from him include his own teacher, al-Khaṭīb, as well as Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir—a striking case of “the earlier and the later,” for there were one hundred and eight years between the deaths of those two master scholars.

Ghayth died in Damascus, in Ṣafar of 509 AH, at sixty-six years of age.

231 – ʿĪsā ibn Shuʿayb ibn Ibrāhīm al-Sijzī **
A ḥadith scholar, learned man, ascetic, and senior of the long-lived, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Sijzī was a Sufi resident of Herat and the father of Shaykh Abū al-Waqt.