leaving him money, but he would give it back. People would say to him, “Then distribute it to whomever you think deserving,” yet he still refused.

His humility was such that he taught both young and old and guided absolute beginners. I saw him helping children memorize the Qur’an from their wooden tablets. He would not allow anyone to walk alongside him; I tried it once and he rebuked me. I frequented him for about a year and a half, and during that time I neither witnessed nor heard of a single lapse for which he could be blamed.

Abū Masʿūd Kūtāh used to say, “Abū Mūsā is a hidden treasure.”

Husayn ibn Yawḥan (1) al-Bāwarrī related: “I was in the town of al-Khān (2) when a man asked me about a dream. He said, ‘I saw as though the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had passed away.’ I answered, ‘If your dream is true, an imām without peer in our time will die, for a similar vision was seen when al-Shāfiʿī, al-Thawrī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal died.’ We had not reached nightfall before news arrived of the death of the ḥāfiẓ Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī.

“ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Khujandī reported: When Abū Mūsā died, they had barely completed the funeral rites before a tremendous rain fell in the midst of intense heat. Water was scarce in Isfahan, yet, despite the vast crowd, hardly anyone left the spot. In the last session he ever dictated he had remarked that whenever someone of rank with Allah dies, Allah sends clouds on the day of his death as a sign of His forgiveness for him and for those who perform the funeral prayer over him.”

I heard our teacher, the eminent scholar Abū al-ʿAbbās (3) ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm, extol Abū Mūsā’s prodigious memory and place him ahead of the ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir on account of the usefulness and reach of his writings.