enough to bear Your words.’ He said, ‘So I invoked Allah with that supplication, and I was delivered that very night.

I heard Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghani relate that the amir Shujaʿ ibn Abi Zakariyya (1) told him:

“One day al-Malik al-Kamil said to me, ‘There is a jurist here whom people claim is an unbeliever.’ I replied, ‘I do not know him.’ He said, ‘Yes you do; he is a hadith scholar.’ I asked, ‘Perhaps you mean the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghani?’ He answered, ‘That is the one.’

I said, ‘Your Majesty, among the scholars there are those who seek the Hereafter and others who seek this world, and here you are the gateway to worldly standing. Has this man ever come to you, or interceded through someone, asking you for anything (2)?’ He said, ‘No.’

So I said, ‘By Allah, they are merely jealous of him. Is there in these lands anyone higher than you?’ He answered, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Then this man is the foremost of the scholars just as you are the foremost of men.’

He said, ‘May Allah reward you with good for enlightening me.’ I thereupon sent him a note recommending the ḥāfiẓ, and he summoned me. When I arrived, Shaykh al-Shuyūkh Ibn Hammuwah and ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Zanjari (3) were with him. The sultan said to me, ‘We are dealing with the matter of the ḥāfiẓ.’

I said, ‘Your Majesty, the people envy him, and here between us is this shaykh’—meaning Shaykh al-Shuyūkh—‘and I have put him under oath: Have you ever heard from the ḥāfiẓ any words that would expel a man from Islam?’ He replied, ‘By Allah, no. I have heard nothing from him except what is praiseworthy, and I have never even met him.’

ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Zanjari then spoke, praising the ḥāfiẓ and his students at length, saying, ‘I know them well; I have never seen their like.’

I added, ‘And I say something else: No harm will reach him until three thousand Kurds have been killed.’ He said, ‘Then the ḥāfiẓ shall not be harmed.’ I said, ‘Write that in your own hand,’ and he did.”