al-Tārīkh, which outshines all other compilations. In it he assembled the accounts of the kings of al-Andalus and the Maghrib, and he recorded in full detail the history of Ceuta and its scholars. He also wrote Mashāriq al-Anwār fī Iqtifāʾ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Āthār (1), dealing with the Muwaṭṭaʾ and the two Ṣaḥīḥs …
He went on to say: “In his homeland he attained a rank and prestige never before reached by anyone from his town, yet this only increased him in humility and reverential fear of Allah, Exalted is He. He has a number of lesser treatises that we have not mentioned here (2).”
Qāḍī Shams al-Dīn states in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān (3): “He was the leading authority on hadith in his time, the most versed of people in its sciences, as well as in grammar, lexicography, the speech of the Arabs, their historical chronicles, and their genealogies.
“Among his works are al-Ikmāl fī Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (4), with which he completed al-Muʿlim of al-Māzarī; Mashāriq al-Anwār, an explanation of difficult hadith terminology; and al-Tanbīhāt, a book brimming with valuable points and rarities. All of his compositions are masterful (5), and he also composed elegant poetry.”
…is regarded as the greatest manual of applied rhetoric in Arabic literature; Ibn Hajar even called it the most comprehensive and wide-ranging of all commentaries. It was published in Morocco in 1975, edited by Salah al-Din al-Adlabi, Muhammad al-Sharqawi, and Muhammad al-Hasan Ajanf.
(1) A lexicon devoted to clarifying rare expressions in hadith and fixing their vocalisation. The entries are arranged according to the alphabetical order current in the Maghrib—first letter, then second, then third. It was printed in two parts bound in a single volume in 1333 AH/1915 CE by al-Maktaba al-Atiqa and Dar al-Turath under the title Mishariq al-anwar ala sahih al-athar. Ibn Qirqol (d. 569 AH) produced an abridgement entitled Matalic al-anwar ala sahih al-athar; see Kashf al-zunun, 2/1687, 1715.
(2) See Hadiyat al-arifin, 1/805, and Shajarat al-nur, 1/141.
(3) p. 483.
(4) Footnote no. 64 in the biography of al-Mazari has already noted that al-Ubi incorporated this commentary into his work Ikmal ikmal al-muallim; consult it there.
(5) In addition to the works already mentioned, his book al-Ilmaʿ ila maʿrifat usul al-riwaya wa-taqyid al-samaʿ has also been printed.