three dinars a year from the jizya (poll-tax) revenue. More than one of the emirs offered to raise his court stipend (1), but he would not accept. For all the occasions on which he humbled them, he still occupied in their hearts a place no one else enjoyed. They even proposed appointing him chief judge in Egypt, but he declared, “By Allah, I will never judge for them….”

Shujāʿ went on to say: he copied the entire Sahih Muslim with a single pen. I heard him once, when someone remarked, “So-and-so has been granted wealth and a strong stomach,” reply, “They envy him only for the frequency of his visits to the privy.”

I often heard him, whenever ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—may Allah be pleased with him—was mentioned, say, “The happiness of the Muslims was folded up in ʿUmar’s shroud.” (2)

In Tabaqāt al-Qurrāʾ (3) we recorded that the people of Egypt remained three months without a judge in the year thirty-three. The state’s choice finally fell upon Shaykh Abū al-ʿAbbās, but he laid down stringent conditions, among them that he would not rule according to their doctrine—that is, Rāfiḍī Shiʿism. They agreed to nothing except that he judge according to the school of the Imāmiyya.

I recited the seven canonical readings through his chain to Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr the grammarian, from al-Kamāl al-ʿAbbāsī, from Shujāʿ al-Mudlijī, from him.

I also read, in the handwriting of Ibn al-Anmāṭī, that our shaykh Shujāʿ told me: Shaykh Abū al-ʿAbbās had compelled himself to eat extremely little, reaching the utmost limit in that regard. He marveled at anyone who consumed thirty mouthfuls and would say, “If people ate of harmful food the amount I eat of wholesome food, they would never fall ill.”

Shujāʿ further related that Abū al-ʿAbbās had a daughter. When she grew up he taught her the seven readings, and she read to him the two Ṣaḥīḥs and other works, and she wrote—