the description—except you; indeed, you rise above all that has been said of you (1), and so does this noble sharīf (2).’ He then prayed for him and lavished praise upon him.
I say: Among those who received transmission from him by ijāzah (formal authorisation) were Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī and Zaynab bint al-Shaʿrī.
His poetic pieces were conveyed by Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Khwārizmī, Abū Saʿd Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd al-Shāshī, and others.
He was born in Zamakhshar—a village in the Khwārizm district—in the month of Rajab, 467 AH.
He stood at the forefront of eloquence, Arabic language, semantics, and rhetoric, and he composed graceful verse.
Al-Samʿānī said: Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd Allāh recited to us, saying, ‘Al-Zamakhsharī himself recited to me these lines, mourning his teacher Abū Muḍar the grammarian (3):
A lady asked, “What are these pearls
that your eyes let fall in twin strings, twin strings?” (4)
I replied, “They are the very pearls with which (5)
Abū Muḍar filled my ears—now they drop from my eyes.”’
(1) Ibn Saʿd, al-Tabaqat, 1/321, records it with the wording: “No Arab was ever mentioned to me without my finding him, when I met him, below what had been reported—except Zayd; the reports did not capture all that was in him.” Ibn Hajar, al-Isaba, 1/573 (entry on Zayd al-Khayl), cites: “Everyone praised to me in the Jahiliyya whom I later met in Islam proved inferior to the description, save you.”
(2) The passage placed between brackets is supplied from Nuzhat al-Alba.
(3) The transmitter is Mahmud b. Jarir al-Dabbi al-Isfahani, who died in Marw in 507/1113. He is listed in Muʿjam al-Udabaʾ, 19/123-124, and Bughyat al-Wuʿat, 2/276; Ibn Khallikan calls him Mansur. The two verses are also cited in Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 5/172; Muʿjam al-Udabaʾ, 19/124; Inbaʾ al-Ruwat, 3/267; al-Mustafad min Dhayl Tarikh Baghdad, 229; Bughyat al-Wuʿat, 2/276; al-ʿIqd al-Thamin, 7/148; al-Nujum al-Zahira, 274; and Shadharat al-Dhahab, 4/120.
(4) Wafayat, al-ʿIqd al-Thamin, al-Nujum, and Shadharat read: “tasāqaṭa min ʿaynik” (“fell from your eyes”).
(5) Wafayat, al-ʿIqd al-Thamin, and al-Nujum read: “alladhi kana qad hashā” (“which he had stuffed”).