ʿIyāḍ ibn Mūsā ibn ʿIyāḍ ibn ʿAmr(1) ibn Mūsā ibn ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣabī, Andalusian by origin, later of Ceuta, and Mālikī in jurisprudence.
He was born in 476 AH.
His grandfather(2) moved from al-Andalus to Fez and then settled in Ceuta.
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ did not embark upon the pursuit of knowledge in his early youth. The first thing he obtained was a simple ijāzah (license to transmit) from the ḥadith master Abū ʿAlī al-Ghassānī, even though he could have heard from him directly, for their lifetimes overlapped by twenty-two years.
In the early 500s AH he journeyed to al-Andalus, where he narrated from the judge Abū ʿAlī ibn Sukkara al-Ṣadafī—whom he closely accompanied—as well as from Abū Baḥr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdīn, Abū al-Ḥusayn Sirāj al-Ṣaghīr, Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿAṭṭāb, Hishām ibn Aḥmad, and several others(3).
= For further biographical and bibliographical details, see: al-Zahira 5/285; al-Suyuti, Tabaqat al-Huffaz, p. 480; Miftah al-Saada 2/149; Jadhwat al-Iqtibas, p. 277; al-Muqri, Azhar al-Riyad fi Akhbar al-Qadi Iyad; Nafh al-Tib 7/333-335; Hajji Khalifa, Kashf al-Zunun, entries 127, 158, 248, 395, 577, 1052, 1186, 1211, 1779, 1961; Shadharat al-Dhahab 4/138-139; Taj al-Arus 1/216 (root ḥaṣaba); Ajla al-Masanid, p. 31; Rawdat al-Jannat, pp. 506-507; Hadiyyat al-Arifin 1/805; Idah al-Maknun 2/243-244; Salwat al-Anfas 1/51; Fahris al-Faharis 2/183-189; Mu‛jam al-Matbu‛at, p. 1397; Shajarat al-Nur al-Zakiyya 1/140-141; al-Fihris al-Tamhidi, p. 386; Tarikh al-Fikr al-Andalusi, p. 283; Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, vol. 6, pp. 266-275 (Arabic edition).
(1) This is the reading found in the base manuscript as well as in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, Ibn al-Abbar’s Mu‛jam, and Wafayat al-A‛yan, whereas Qadi Iyad’s son Muhammad, and likewise al-Dibaj al-Mudhahhab, give the name as ‘Amrun.
(2) That is, the form ‘Amrun mentioned by Muhammad, the son of Qadi Iyad; see the detailed discussion in Ahmad Saqr’s introduction to al-Ilma‛, p. 3.
(3) Consult his work al-Ghunya, a catalogue of his teachers, edited by Dr. Muhammad ibn ‛Abd al-Karim and published by al-Dar al-‛Arabiyya lil-Kitab, Tunis, 1979.