He also granted an ijazah (authorization to transmit) to the ḥadith master al-Ḍiyāʾ.

Ibn ʿAsākir relates: His father was from Turaythīth; a cultivated scholar who taught belles-lettres. He arrived, preached, and was warmly received. Endowed with clear insight, he kept up his teaching without interruption and came to occupy the undisputed leadership of the Shāfiʿī community.

Ibn al-Najjār says: He came to Baghdad as an envoy and there married the daughter of Abū al-Futūḥ al-Isfarāyinī.

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qaṭīʿī recited to me, quoting Abū al-Maʿālī Masʿūd ibn Muḥammad, the jurist:

“They claim that leisure rests on causes three,
Yet leave the fourth—the finest—unexpressed.
Security, wealth, and health they name,
Unaware that youth outshines the rest.”

I say: He was eloquent, silver-tongued, a Qurʾānic exegete, and a jurist adept at legal disputation. He also taught at the Jarūkhiyya (1). It is reported that he preached in Damascus and asked Sultan Nūr al-Dīn to attend his gathering. When the ruler came, he began admonishing him and addressed him, “O Maḥmūd,” just as Burhān al-Balḫī, the shaykh of the Ḥanafīs, used to do. The sultan therefore summoned the chamberlain, who came up, and ordered him not to let the preacher address him by name. Later someone asked the king about this, and he replied: “When Burhān would say, ‘O Maḥmūd,’ my hair would stand on end out of awe for him and my heart would soften; but when this man says it, my heart hardens and my breast tightens.” (2)

Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī (3) transmits this story and remarks: “al-Qutb was submerged in the oceans of worldly life.”