—Tears have sworn, in grief, that they will not leave my eyelids,
And sleep will not visit them until the day I meet you.
I have read—in the handwriting of Shaykh Muwaffaq—that he said: “My brother Abū ʿUmar and I used to attend his lesson, then we stopped. Later I heard my brother say: I entered upon him afterward, and he asked, ‘Why have you cut yourselves off from me?’ I replied, ‘Some people are saying that you are an Ashʿarī.’ He said, ‘By Allah, I am not an Ashʿarī.’ This is the gist of the report ⦗1⦘.
Ibn al-Jumayzī also recited to him the Qur’an according to the Ten canonical readings.
He died on the eleventh of Ramadan in 585 AH.
64 – al-Ṣāʾigh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
The imam, ḥadith scholar, instructor, ḥāfiẓ, and muḥaddith: Abū Saʿd Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Ḥusayn al-Iṣbahānī, known as al-Ṣāʾigh.
He was born in 497 AH.
(1) Taj al-Din Ibn al-Subki transmits this anecdote from his teacher al-Dhahabi and adds: “I fear the report is fabricated, for it is certain that Ibn Abi ‘Asrun held an Ashari creed, and it is highly unlikely that Abu ‘Umar would have dared to voice such a statement. In that period no one would have ventured to repudiate the Ashari school, for it was the trodden path. Nor do I think Ibn Abi ‘Asrun would at that time have taken pride in both men and reproached them for cutting relations. Nothing in the narrative—apart from the phrase ‘then I heard my brother’—strikes me as credible; rather, the two men distanced themselves from him because he differed from them in doctrine. Allah knows the real reason for the rupture. Al-Muwaffaq and Abu ‘Umar were scholars and devout men—this we do not deny—but we do object to our shaykh’s constant intrusion into questions of creed, his opening of locked doors, and his speaking about matters he does not comprehend. Silence on such issues would have served him better in his grave and in the Hereafter.” (Tabaqat, 7/134).
We say: This is a weak criticism on al-Subki’s part and only one portion of what he wrote about his teacher al-Dhahabi, who taught him, helped him memorize, and made him a scholar. He should not have overstepped in this way—may Allah pardon him.
(*) Al-Dhahabi provides his biography in Tarikh al-Islam, fol. 97 (Ahmad III MS 2917/14); see also al-Ibar, 4/246, and Ibn al-‘Imad, Shadharat, 4/273.