So al-Farāwī would never stand until the ḥāfiẓ had first risen (1).

Abū al-Mawāhib said: I used to confer with him in private about the ḥuffāẓ he had met. He told me, “In Baghdad it was Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdarī; in Isfahan, Abū Naṣr al-Yūnaratī—although the ḥāfiẓ Ismāʿīl was more widely known than he.”

I said to him, “If so, then our master has seen no one comparable to himself.”

He replied, “Do not say that. Allah, Exalted is He, says: ‘So do not claim purity for yourselves’ (Najm 53:32).”

I answered, “Yet He also says: ‘And as for the favour of your Lord, proclaim it’ (Duḥā 93:11).”

He said, “Indeed. Were someone to say, ‘My eyes have never beheld my equal,’ he would be telling the truth (2).”

Abū al-Mawāhib added: For my part, I have never seen his like, nor anyone in whom so many virtues converged: clinging to a single path for forty years; unfailingly attending the five daily congregational prayers in the front row, save when excused; observing spiritual retreat during Ramadan and the first ten days of Dhū al-Ḥijjah; having no desire to acquire property or build houses—he relieved himself of all that; turning away from posts such as the imamate or the pulpit, and refusing them even after they were offered; scarcely giving the rulers a thought; and obliging himself to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, fearing no reproach for the sake of Allah.

He said to me, “When I resolved to teach ḥadith—by Allah, Who sees all—nothing moved me to it out of love for status or precedence. I simply asked myself: When will I ever relate everything I have heard, and what benefit is there if I leave it behind merely as pages? So I prayed for guidance, sought the permission of my foremost shaykhs and the city’s leaders, and visited them one by one; each of them said, ‘Who is more entitled to this than you?’”

I began the work in the year thirty-three. My father, the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim, then told me: “When I returned from my journey, my grandfather, the judge Abū al-Mufaḍḍal, said to me…”