That same year Egypt was struck by a severe drought and widespread mortality; the whole province was ruined, its inhabitants fled, and in their desperation they consumed carrion and even human flesh, after which many of them perished. The reason was that the Nile’s rise stopped at thirteen cubits and a few finger-breadths. Some said it never even reached the full thirteen (1)—and Allah’s decree prevails.
111 – Ibn Ḥaydara: Muḥammad ibn Ḥaydara ibn ʿUmar al-Zaydī,
a Ḥasanid sharif, Abū al-Muʿammar Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Manāqib Ḥaydara ibn al-Imām ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Zaydī, an ʿAlawī from Kūfa.
He lived for ninety years.
He was the last person to transmit from Abū al-Ghanāʾim al-Narsī; he also related from his own grandfather (2) and from Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad al-Thaqafī.
Among those who narrated from him were Aḥmad ibn Ṭāriq and Ibn Khalīl.
Tamīm al-Bandanījī said: “He was a Rāfiḍī.”
(1) Ibn Taghri Birdi al-Atabaki comments: “Because the old water level was too low it was not recorded; the Nile’s rise that year reached twelve cubits and twenty-one fingers.”
(*) His biography is recorded by Ibn al-Dubaythi, Tarikh, 1/251, ed. Bashshar; al-Mundhiri, Takmila, no. 421; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, fol. 72 (Paris 1582) and al-Ibar, 4/282; al-Safadi, al-Wafi, 3/32; Ibn Taghri Birdi, al-Nujum, 6/14; and Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat, 4/315.
(2) He died in 539/1144. Ibn al-Najjar, in his Tarikh, praises him highly and quotes al-Salafi: “This sharif Umar was a man of letters and a grammarian. He followed the Zaydi school, issued fatwas in Kufa on that madhhab, and attended hadith sessions with us before a number of our Kufan shaykhs. He was intelligent, held a good opinion of the Companions, praised them, and dissociated himself from those who reviled them.” See al-Tarikh al-mujaddad, fols. 85-86 (Zahiriyya). The hadith scholar Ibn Asakir also transmitted from him and mentioned him in his Mu jam shuyukh.