“…put me to work.”

He said, “Show me your hand.”
So I showed it to him, and he remarked, “This is a hand suited only to the pen.”
He then handed me a small packet containing gold, but I said, “I will take nothing beyond the wage for my labour; if you wish, I can copy for you and be paid the usual fee.”
He replied, “Go up,” and told his servant, “Give him the pestle.”
I pounded the rice with them while he kept an eye on me. When I had worked for about an hour he said, “Come here,” gave me the gold and added, “This is your pay.”
I accepted it, whereupon Allah placed in my heart the urge to pursue knowledge. I applied myself until I mastered the madhhab, studied the two Usūls, memorised al-Wāḥidī’s al-Wasīṭ in Qurʾanic exegesis, and heard the well-known hadith collections (1).

Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir said: Abū al-Najīb told me that he heard (hadith) from Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād, undertook spiritual discipline, then earned his living drawing water for wages, after which he preached and taught at the Niẓāmiyyah. He arrived in Damascus in 558 AH intending to visit Jerusalem, but the lapse of the truce prevented it.

I (the author) say: Those who narrated from him include: he himself, his son al-Qāsim, al-Samʿānī, Ibn Sukaynah, Zayn al-Umanaʾ, Abū Naṣr Ibn al-Shīrāzī, his nephew Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn ʿUmar, and many others.

He died in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of the year 563 AH and was buried in his madrasah (2).

303 – Ibn Tāj al-Qurrāʾ ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭūsī *

The shaykh, the ascetic, the long-lived Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad