Al-Faḍl ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṭawīl sought his daughter’s hand, so he married her to him. Later the son-in-law asked that her mother come along to keep her company, and he consented—how exquisite this man’s kindness in honoring Abū al-ʿAbbās (1)!
Al-Silafī said: “Ibn al-Ḥuṭayʿa was a foremost authority on the Qurʾānic readings. I have read, in the handwriting of Abū Ṭāhir ibn al-Anmāṭī, the following:
‘I heard our shaykh Shujāʿ al-Mudlijī—one of Allah’s choice worshippers—say, “Our shaykh Ibn al-Ḥuṭayʿa was uncompromising in the religion of Allah, stern and unyielding toward the enemies of Allah. The dāʿī al-duʿāt (2), for all the breadth of his power and the reach of his command, would attend his session, yet he neither stood in awe of him nor showed him honor, declaring: ‘The most foolish of people regarding such-and-such a question are the Rāfiḍīs (Shiʿite rejectionists); they have gone against the Book and the Sunnah, and have disbelieved in Allah.’”’
I was once with him in his mosque overlooking Cairo when several Egyptian ministers entered—I believe it was Ibn ʿAbbās. He asked for water, and one of his pages brought a silver vessel. The moment Ibn al-Ḥuṭayʿa saw it he pressed his hand to his chest, let out a cry that filled the mosque and exclaimed, “Ah, how it sears my liver! Will you drink—in a gathering where the hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is being recited—from silver vessels? By Allah, you shall not!”
He drove the servant out, and the boy left. The shaykh then called for an earthen jug; they produced one whose rim was chipped. The minister, abashed before the shaykh, drank from it, and I—by Allah—saw him exactly as Allah says: “He will gulp it yet can hardly swallow it” (Ibrāhīm 14:17).
He also related: A man once came to our shaykh Ibn al-Ḥuṭayʿa with a waist-wrapper and swore, by triple divorce, that he must accept it. The shaykh reproved him and said, “Hang it on that peg.” There it remained until moths consumed it and it crumbled away. He used to copy manuscripts for wages, and he had outstanding―