Zaki al-Din al-Barzali (1) said: “Abu al-Waqt journeyed through Iraq and Khuzistan, and he taught in Herat, Malin, Bushanj, Kirman, Yazd, Isfahan, al-Karj, Fars, and Hamadan. The leading ḥadith masters and viziers sat before him. He possessed many books and individual fascicles, and countless people heard ḥadith from him.”
Ibn al-Jawzi (2) said: “He was extraordinarily patient in study—upright, much engaged in remembrance, night prayer, and weeping, following the way of the early generations. In the year of his death he resolved to perform the ḥajj and had prepared everything he would need, but he passed away before setting out.”
Yusuf ibn Aḥmad al-Shirazi, in his work Forty Lands, relates: “When I travelled to our shaykh, the voyager of the world and musnid of the age, Abu al-Waqt, Allah decreed that I should reach him in the furthest part of Kirman. I greeted him, kissed him, and sat before him.
“He asked me, ‘What has brought you to these lands?’
“I replied, ‘My sole purpose was to come to you; after Allah my reliance is upon you. Whatever of your narrations reached me I have already written down with my own pen, and I have walked to you on my own two feet so that I might gain the blessing of your breaths and attain the elevation of your chain of transmission.’
“He said, ‘May Allah grant you and us success in pleasing Him, and make our striving for Him and our intention directed toward Him. Had you truly known me as I am, you would neither have greeted me nor sat before me.’
“He then wept for a long time and moved those present to tears. After that he supplicated: ‘O Allah, veil us with Your gracious covering, and place beneath that veil whatever will earn Your good pleasure with us.’ Then he said, ‘My son, know that I too once travelled on foot to hear the Ṣaḥīḥ, walking with my father from Herat to al-Dawudi in Bushanj when I was not yet ten years old. My father would set two stones upon my hands and say, “Carry them.”
‘Out of fear of him I would keep hold of them and continue walking while he watched me. When he saw that I had grown weary he would order me to throw away one stone; I would do so, and the burden would become lighter…’