al-Dūnaqī (1); and in al-Zuzz (2) he heard from Mankil ibn Muhammad; at Tadmor he received a few lines from Wuhaib al-Tamimi; at Sarāy (3)—the capital of Özbek Khan’s realm—from ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAli al-Sufunī. He also collected narrations in Mardin, Suhraward, Dabil, Juyyith (4), Khilāṭ, Qahj, and other places, and from that material he produced al-Arbaʿīn al-Baladiyya (The Forty Local Traditions).
(5) While still a young man he held dictation sessions in Salmās, selected readings with more than one shaykh, recorded both elevated and ordinary chains of transmission, and copied an untold number of fascicles. He could transcribe a bulky fascicle in a single night; his hand was precise and quick, though highly cursive and therefore hard to decipher.
He remained on the road for eighteen years, writing down hadith, jurisprudence, belles-lettres, and poetry.
He reached Damascus in 509 AH and stayed there for two years (6), compiling knowledge while resident in the khānqāh.
From his slips and marginal notes they later compiled a large volume entitled Muʿjam al-Safar (7).
He then settled in the port of Alexandria for some sixty-odd years, until his death,
(1) Al-Samani, in the entry “al-Dunqi” of his Genealogies, and after him Ibn al-Athir in al-Lubab, vocalize the word with damma on the dal, sukun on the waw, fatha on the nun, and a final qaf; the nisba refers to Dunq, a village in the district of Nihawand. Yaqut, however, vocalizes the dal with a fatha.
(2) A district belonging to the province of Hamadhan (Muʿjam al-Buldan).
(3) It is probably the locality that Yaqut mentions under the name “Saraw.”
(4) The copyist of the base manuscript vocalized the word with fatha on the jim and gemination of the waw; in doing so he follows Abu Saʿd al-Samani in al-Ansab, who, under “al-Juwaythi,” writes: “with fatha on the jim, kasra on the geminated waw, sukun on the ya, and ending with tha’; this nisba goes back to al-Juwayth, a town near Basra.” Yaqut, by contrast, gives it with damma on the jim and an un-geminated fatha on the waw, and says it is a place between Baghdad and Awana; that is probably a different location, unknown to him.
(5) The place is also called al-Baladaniyya.
(6) The autograph reads “two years,” a scribal slip. Al-Dhahabi’s History of Islam records that he stayed in Damascus for only one year (folio 62, MS Ahmed III 2917/14).
(7) The collection was compiled by the eminent hadith scholar Zaki al-Din ʿAbd al-ʿAzim al-Mundhiri (d. 656/1258). He copied the material exactly as he found it, not as it ideally should have been arranged; hence its order is less than perfect. Al-Mundhiri’s own words about his compilation remain …