97 – Al-Khiraqī, Repetitor of the Amīniyyah, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān
The pious Imām, Repetitor of the Amīniyyah, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Musallam al-Lakhmī, the Damascene, son of al-Khiraqī (1), a Shāfiʿī jurist.
He was born in the year 499 AH, the very year in which the ḥadith master Ibn ʿAsākir (2) was born.
Among the teachers he heard from were Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Mawāzinī, ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Ḥamzah, Ibn Qubays, Ṭāhir ibn Sahl, and several others.
Those who narrated from him include Shaykh al-Muwaffaq, al-Ḍiyāʾ, al-Bahāʾ, Ibn Khalīl, his brother Ibrāhīm al-Ādamī, the preacher of Mardā, Ibn Saʿd, Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim, and many more.
Ibn al-Ḥājib reports—through Ibn Nuqṭah, from Ibn al-Anmāṭī—that al-Khiraqī was the transmitter of the recension of Abū Mushir; no autograph exemplar was found with it, and what I heard was merely his wording: “from Ibn al-Mawāzinī.”
Ibn al-Ḥājib also said, “He was a jurist, trustworthy and righteous; he would recite [the Qurʾān] every day and night…”
(*) He is given a biographical entry by Ibn Nuqtah, al-Taqyid, fol. 141; al-Mundhiri, al-Takmila, 1 / no. 153; Ibn al-Sabuni, Takmilat Ikmal al-Ikmal, p. 123; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, fol. 31 (Paris ms. 1582), al-Ibar, 4 / 261, and al-Mushtabih, p. 226; al-Subki, Tabaqat, 7 / 153; Ibn al-Mulqin, al-Uqd, fol. 159; Ibn Nasir al-Din, Tawdih al-Mushtabih, 1 / fol. 193 (Zahiriyya); al-Manawi, al-Kawakib al-Durriyya, 2 / 88; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum, 6 / 116; and Ibn al-Imad, al-Shadharat, 4 / 289.
(1) The nisba is pronounced khirqi, with a kasra under the kha and a fatha on the ra, indicating a dealer in rags and used clothes. This vocalisation is adopted by al-Dhahabi in al-Mushtabih and by Ibn Nasir al-Din in Tawdih al-Mushtabih. The editors of al-Subki’s Tabaqat print it kharqi, with a fatha on the kha and a sukun on the ra, as though derived from the village of Khirq near Marw, which is incorrect. Al-Dhahabi writes in al-Mushtabih: “With a kasra on the kha … ‘Abd al-Rahman b. Ali al-Khiraqi al-Dimashqi transmitted the recension of Abu Mushir” (p. 226).
(2) Meaning: in the same year. Otherwise, al-Hafiz Abu al-Qasim Ibn Asakir was born at the very beginning of the year, whereas this Khiraqi was born in mid-Sha‘ban, as al-Mundhiri states in al-Takmila and others confirm.