Ibn Berri (1) later defended him on that score.

I add: While in Basra he dictated a series of literary sessions, composed Durrat al-Ghawwās fī Wahm al-Khawāṣṣ (2), al-Mulḥa together with its commentary (3), a Dīwān of epistolary prose, and other works besides. Masters of eloquence bowed to the brilliance of both his prose and his verse.

Those who transmitted from him include his son Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh; the vizier ʿAlī ibn Ṭirād; Qiwām al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Ṣadaqa; the ḥadith scholar Ibn Nāṣir; Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mandāʾī; Abū Bakr ibn al-Naqūr; Muḥammad ibn Asʿad al-ʿIrāqī; al-Mubārak ibn Aḥmad al-Azajī; ʿAlī ibn al-Muẓaffar al-Ẓahīrī; Aḥmad ibn al-Nāʿim; Manūjhar ibn Turkānshāh; Abū al-Karam al-Karābīsī; Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Mutawakkil; and many others.

The last person to receive an ijāza from him was Abū Ṭāhir al-Khushūʿī, who in turn authorized our own teachers. He narrated from al-Ḥarīrī, who said:

“Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī was an eloquent, articulate beggar, a destitute yet fluent shaykh. He came to us in Basra, stood in the Banī Ḥarām Mosque, offered the salām and then asked for alms. The governor was present and the mosque was packed with scholars; his eloquence amazed them. He spoke of how the Byzantines had taken his son captive, as we have mentioned in the Ḥarāmiyya Maqāma. A group then gathered around me, and I related his story. Each one told me that he too had seen from him in another mosque exactly what I had seen, and that he had heard from him the same theme…”