and even wrote a small treatise on the matter. I read to him al-Jaʿdiyyāt, the History of al-Fasawī, and al-Baqqāl’s Selections from al-Mukhalliṣ (1).
Ibn al-Jawzī (2) said, “I would recite to him while he wept, and I derived more benefit from his tears than from his narrations; I profited from him as I did from no one else.”
Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī stated in his Muʿjam, “He was the ḥāfiẓ of his age in Baghdad.”
I add: Also passing away in that same year—538 AH—were the shaykh and senior hadith transmitter Abū al-Maʿālī ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn al-Badan al-Ṣaffār (3); the musnid of Isfahan, Ghānim ibn Khālid ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Tājir (4); the musnid Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṣirmā (5)—a cousin of Ibn Nāṣir; the preacher Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Khiḍr al-Muḥawwalī (6), the Qur’an-reciter; the judge Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim ibn al-Muẓaffar ibn al-Shahrazūrī (7) of Mosul; and the shaykh Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī al-Khuwārazmī, the grammarian and Muʿtazilite (8).
(1) See Tadhkirat al-huffaz 4/1283 and Dhayl tabaqat al-Hanabila 1/202. Al-Mukhlis is Abu Tahir Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Abbas al-Baghdadi (d. 393 AH); his biography appears in vol. 16, no. 353. Al-Baqqal is Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Ali ibn al-Fadl al-Warraq (d. 399 AH). Consult Tarikh Baghdad 4/293; Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums 1/352; and Fihris al-Zahiriyya: al-mukhtab min makhtutat al-hadith, p. 401, which mistakenly lists him as Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Baqqal.
(2) Al-Muntazam 10/108; see also Sifat al-safwa 2/499.
(3) His biography was given above under no. 36.
(4) His biography was given above under no. 60.
(5) Biographed in Al-Muntazam 10/110 and Al-Wafi bil-wafayat 2/67.
(6) Biographed in Al-Muntazam 10/110; Ma‘rifat al-qurra al-kibar 1/399; and Ghaya al-nihaya 2/137. Al-Mahuli, in the passive participial form, is derived from Al-Mahul: a village two farsakhs from Baghdad, and also an area in Baghdad known as Bab al-Mahul.
(7) His biography will appear under no. 83.
(8) His biography will appear under no. 91.