Then al-Sayf said: “I have never met anyone whose religion, knowledge, and sound judgment can truly be relied upon who was pleased with him.”

I replied: “In that case, they are of no weight.”

He went on: “My grandfather (1) used to say: Abū al-Muẓaffar Ibn Ḥamdī often rebuked Abū al-Faraj for many expressions in which he departed from the Sunnah. Abū al-Fath Ibn al-Mannī also took him to task over a number of issues, and when his confusion finally became evident, the leading figures among our colleagues—and even among his own followers—turned away from him. Abū Isḥāq al-ʿAlthī corresponded with him and expressed his disapproval as well.

“Abū Maʿtūq Maḥfūẓ ibn Maʿtūq ibn al-Buzūrī informed me—in his History, in the biography of Ibn al-Jawzī—that he wrote:

‘Within his school of law he became an imam to whom people pointed, and when the scholars of his day were counted the little finger would be folded for him. He lectured at the Ibn al-Shamḥal Madrasa (2), at the Madrasa of al-Jiha Banifsha (3), and at the Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir Madrasa (4). He also built a school for himself in Darb Dīnār (5), and he endowed…’”