and his conduct was irreproachable and his way commendable. He lived austerely, shunning pretension in the manner of the early generations, and was a constant (1) fixture in his mosque at al-Raḥbah. He was born in 475 AH and died in Muḥarram 552 AH. The first section of his Mashyakha has come into my hands.
In that same year his brother, Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad (2), the well-known poet, also passed away at the age of seventy.
Some maintained that Abū al-Ḥusayn’s given name was al-Ḥasan, and that is how Ibn al-Najjār recorded it.
Alī ibn Aḥmad al-Hāshimī informed us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad the chronicler informed us; Muḥammad ibn al-Mubārak the jurist informed us in 551 AH; al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī informed us; ʿAbd Allah ibn Yaḥyā al-Sukkari informed us; Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣaffār informed us; ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Tarqafī narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf narrated to us, from Sufyān, from Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ, from ʿAbd Allah ibn Dīnār, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayra, who said:
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Faith consists of over sixty, or over seventy, branches. The highest of them is the testimony that there is no god but Allah, and the lowest of them is removing something harmful from the road; and modesty is a branch of faith.”
This is an authentic hadith with an elevated isnād (4).