for a year and a half, chained hand and foot. They tried to compel him to pronounce a word of disbelief, but he refused, and during that time he learned their Byzantine script.

I heard him say: “Whoever serves the inkwells, the pulpits will serve him. It is binding on the teacher not to be harsh, and on the student not to be arrogant.”

I saw him after he had passed ninety-three years of age with all his senses sound; none of them had deteriorated. His mind was steady, and he could read the tiniest script from afar. We visited him well before his death, and he said, “A fluid has flowed into my ear,” then recited to us from his own collections of hadith. He remained like that for about two months (1), after which the condition disappeared. Later he fell ill, and he instructed that his grave be dug deeper than is customary and that the following be inscribed upon it: “Say, ‘It is a momentous message from which you are turning away.’” (Sad 38:67-68)

For the last three days of his life he did not cease reciting the Quran until he died, before the noon prayer, on the second of Rajab in the year 535 AH.

Al-Samʿānī said: “I never saw anyone more comprehensive in the sciences than he. He studied every discipline and excelled in arithmetic and the laws of inheritance. I heard him say, ‘I have renounced every science I learned except hadith and its discipline.’ I saw him, and none of his senses had changed; he could read minute, distant writing, was swift in copying manuscripts, and recited hadith beautifully. While I was immersed in reading, he would busy himself examining the fascicles I had with me. It happened that he found a fascicle of al-Khuzaʿī’s hadith which I had read in Kufa to ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-ʿAlawī (2) with authorisation from Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿAlawī, and it contained delightful anecdotes. He said, ‘Leave it with me.’

I returned the next day, and he produced it, already copied, and said, ‘Read it aloud so that I may hear it.’ I exclaimed, ‘My master, how can that be?!’ Nevertheless, I read it, and he told the gathering, ‘Write down my name.’