for the sake of adhering to the Sunnah. This is praiseworthy for one who is resolute and whose ruler does not harm him; but should the ruler harm him, he may omit the Sunnah act, yet he is never allowed to abandon an obligation—unless he fears the sword.

Ibn Rāfiʿ informed me that he had read, in the handwriting of ʿImād al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn al-Qāsim al-Ḥāfiẓ, a biographical notice of his father (1), which read:

“My father, Bahāʾ al-Dīn, was counted among the leading imams and scholars from the moment he reached the age at which one listens to ḥadīth. His two uncles—the hadith master Abū al-Ḥusayn and Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, both eminent shaykhs—read hadith to him. Later his own father—meaning when he returned from his travels—arrived in the year 33 (2) and likewise read to him … until he said:

‘The number of his teachers came close to one hundred. For most of them he was the sole transmitter, and he never stopped attending sessions, writing, and composing.

He made the pilgrimage in the year 55 and in Mecca heard from … until he said:

Were it not for his fair copying of the Book of History and his transfer of it from the rough draft, the venerable shaykh—meaning my grandfather—would not have been able to perfect and refine it. When he finished the rough draft he was no longer able to recopy, revise, or clarify its difficult passages; his sight had dimmed and his vision weakened. My father therefore kept writing, copying from small slips and from the backs of pages, revising it, until about one hundred and fifty parts were completed. Some estrangement, however, had grown between them, so the shaykh did not attend the sessions of audition during that period. My father related to me:

“My heart was constricted, so on the night of mid-Shaʿbān I went to my father in the eastern minaret, and what he had been harboring in his heart disappeared.”

I often heard Abū Jaʿfar al-Qurṭubī say, when your father was absent from him, “May Allah reward him on my behalf; were it not for him, the History would never have been completed”—or words to that effect.