terrified, my whole body trembling. I told my mother what had happened, then set out early to the shaykh to resume my reading with him. I related the dream, and he said, “My son, the Shafi‘i school is praiseworthy; I am not telling you to abandon it. Only, do not embrace the Ash‘ari creed.”

I replied, “I do not wish to be split in two. I call you—and everyone here—to witness that, from today, I follow the school of Ahmad b. Hanbal in both fundamentals and practical rulings.”

He said to me, “May Allah grant you success.”

Thereafter I began listening to Ahmad’s books and legal questions and studying law according to his school. That was in Ramadan of the year 493 AH. (1)

Ibn al-Jawzi, and others as well, said: Ibn Nāṣir died on the eighteenth of Sha‘ban in the year 550 AH.

Ibn al-Jawzi also said: The jurist Abū Bakr b. al-Ḥuṣrī told me,

“I saw Ibn Nāṣir in a dream and asked him, ‘What has Allah done with you?’ He answered, ‘He forgave me, and He said to me, “I have forgiven ten of the hadith scholars of your time because you are their chief and master.”’ (2)

I add: In that same year there also died the venerable preacher Abū l-Ḥasan ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Mushkānī, (3) transmitter of al-Bukhārī’s Minor History; the Qur’an-reciter of Iraq, Abū l-Karam al-Mubārak b. al-Ḥasan al-Shahrazūrī, (4) the mufti of Khurasan, the jurist Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā, (5) a companion of al-Ghazālī; the judge and foremost scholar of Egypt, Abū l-Ma‘ālī Mujallī b. Jumay‘ al-Qurashī, (6) author of al-Dhakhā’ir concerning the madhhab; and the distinguished preacher Abū Zakariyyā—