He was one of the pupils of Abū Manṣūr ibn al-Razzāz. He was appointed judge of Aleppo and later of Mosul, where he lectured in its Niẓāmiyyah college and enjoyed considerable influence with its ruler, Masʿūd. A man of noble standing, learning, literary taste, and open-handed generosity, he once gave the jurists of Baghdad a single payment of ten thousand dinars, and would on occasion settle a debtor’s burden of a dinar or two.

Concerning the grasshopper he composed:
“It bears a young camel’s thighs and an ostrich’s legs,
an eagle’s fore-limbs and a lion’s chest.
The serpents of the desert granted it a belly,
while noble steeds endowed it with head and jaws.”

16 – al-Hayṣa Bayṣa Saʿd ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿd al-Tamīmī *
The celebrated poet, Emir Shihāb al-Dīn, Abū al-Fawāris Saʿd ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿd ibn Ṣayfī al-Tamīmī, was a man of letters, a jurist, and a Shāfiʿī.

He heard ḥadith from Abū Ṭālib al-Zaynabī and Abū al-Majd Muḥammad ibn Jahwar.
Transmitted from him: Judge Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād and Muḥammad ibn al-Mannī.