58 – Ibn Ṭāwūs, Abū Muḥammad Hibat Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Baghdādī *
Imam of the Great Mosque of Damascus and its chief Qur’an reciter: Abū Muḥammad Hibat Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Ṭāwūs al-Baghdādī, later al-Dimashqī (1).
He perfected the seven canonical readings under his father, Abū al-Barakāt. He heard a large corpus of hadith, copied manuscripts, and taught at the Sunday market (2), after which he was appointed imam of the mosque.
Among those from whom he received hadith were Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Qubays, Abū al-Qāsim ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ, Mālik al-Bāniyāsī, Ibn al-Akhdar, Abū Manṣūr ibn Shakarwayh (3), and Sulaymān al-Ḥāfiẓ.
He was deemed reliable and was known for his scrupulous piety.
He died in Muḥarram of the year 536 AH, at the age of seventy-five.
Earlier in life he had accompanied an envoy sent by Tutush to Isfahan (4).
= and also Masa’il da‘wa al-hitan wa-l-turuq wa sayl al-ma’ (Questions on suits concerning walls, roads, and the flow of water), among other titles. For the extant manuscripts of these works see Brockelmann, Geschichte, Arabic ed., 6/295–296.
(*) Principal sources: al-Ansab 3/410–411 (“al-Jayruni”); al-Muntazam 10/101; Mu‘jam al-buldan 2/199 (Jayrun); al-Kamil fi al-tarikh 11/90; al-Lubab 1/322; Mir’at al-zaman 8/110; al-Ibar 4/101; Ma‘rifat al-qurra’ al-kibar 1/394–395; Tabaqat al-Subki 7/324; Ghaya al-nihaya 2/349; al-Nujum al-zahira 5/270; Shadharat al-dhahab 4/114.
(1) Al-Sam‘ani lists the nisba “al-Jayruni,” derived from Jayrun, a locality in Damascus; Yaqut adds that the eastern gate of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is still called Bab Jayrun.
(2) I.e. in a mosque situated in Suq al-Ahad, known as Masjid al-‘Abbasi; Suq al-Ahad lies to the east of Jayrun. See Thimar al-maqasid fi dhikr al-masajid, pp. 83–84.
(3) In Ghaya al-nihaya and Ma‘rifat al-qurra’ the name is misread as “Sakruyah” (with an initial s).
(4) The ruler of Damascus intended is Taj al-Dawla Tutush b. Alp Arslan the Seljuk; his biography appeared in vol. 19, no. 46. The subject of the present entry, Ibn Tawus, travelled with his father to the sultan Malikshah.