the twelfth of Jumada I in the year 513 AH; the crowd surpassed all calculation. Our shaykh Ibn Nasir said, “I estimated them at three hundred thousand.”

Al-Mubarak ibn Kamil reported: “The funeral prayer for our shaykh was first held in the Qasr Mosque, led by Ibn Shafiʿ. The gathering was beyond counting. He was then carried to the Mansur Mosque, where a second prayer was performed. A disturbance broke out, they wounded one another, the shaykh’s shroud was torn apart, and he was buried near Imam Ahmad.”

Ibn al-Jawzi also said of him: “He was unrivalled in his craft, the leading authority of his age—good-looking and outwardly endowed with many virtues.”

He (Ibn ʿAqil) said, “I studied with Qadi Abu Yaʿla from the year 447 AH until his death, and—despite my youth—I enjoyed a closeness to him unmatched by any of his other pupils. Abu al-Hasan al-Shirazi was the world’s imam and its ascetic, the champion and singular master of debate. He taught me the art of disputation, and I benefited from his writings….” He then named a number of his teachers ⦗1⦘.

He continued, “Our fellow Ḥanbalīs wanted me to boycott certain scholars, and that would have deprived me of useful knowledge.”

Ibn al-Jawzi comments: “They were forbidding him to sit with the Muʿtazilites, but he refused until he fell into their snares and ventured to reinterpret the revealed texts—we ask Allah for safety.”

He (Ibn ʿAqil) said, “Shaykh Abu Mansur ibn Yusuf turned his attention to me, placed me in charge of issuing legal opinions, and seated me in the Barmakids’ study-circle in the Mansur Mosque after our shaykh died in 458 AH; he took care of all my needs and ensured that I maintained a dignified appearance.”