Judge Ibn Khallikān (1) said: “The Judge’s teachers numbered close to one hundred (2). He passed away in 544 AH, during the month of Ramadan—although some say in Jumādā al-Ākhira of that same year—in Marrakesh, and his son died in 575 AH.”
Ibn Bashkuwāl (3) remarked: “The Judge died far from his homeland, in the middle of the year 544.”
His son, Qadi Muḥammad, added: “He died on a Friday night, halfway through the ninth night of Jumādā al-Ākhira, and was buried in Marrakesh, in the year 544.” (4)
I say: It has reached me that he was killed with spears for having denied the claim of Ibn Tūmart’s infallibility.
In that same year there also died the poet of his age, Qadi Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn al-Arrajānī (5), the judge of Tustar, and the eminent scholar and author Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn—
(1) Wafayat al-Ayan, vol. 3, p. 485.
(2) For their biographical entries, see his book al-Ghunya.
(3) Al-Sila, vol. 2, p. 454.
(4) See al-TaArif bi-l-Qadi Iyad, p. 13, ed. Muhammad Ibn Sharifa, Morocco, 1982. A marginal note in the autograph copy states: Shaykh Abu Amr Ibn Hamaj related that Qadi Iyad’s grave is near Bab Aghmat in Marrakesh, opposite a church. Its location had been forgotten after the Christians took over the site when a certain ruler granted it to them. Around 712 AH/1312 CE (a little before or after), God willed that the grave be rediscovered. Abu Yaqub al-Marini grew angry with the Christians of Marrakesh, allowed Muslims to seize their property, and their houses were plundered. Thinking the Christians had buried jewellery with their dead, people began exhuming the graves around the church. During this, the marker and date of Qadi Iyad’s tomb appeared, to the delight of the jurists. Qadi Abu Ishaq Ibn al-Sabbagh ordered the area to be cleared, the site made public, and a large four-sided domed shrine built over it. He obliged the scholars to visit regularly to recite the Quran so that the grave might become well known. Abu Amr adds: “I visited the dome, prayed to God, and He answered my prayer.” God knows best.
(5) His biography has already been given above under no. 134.