Ibn Musdi said: “He read to me the fascicle ʿArūs al-Ajzāʾ (“The Bride of the Parts”), a portion of what he had heard in Isfahan, and he told me, ‘My son, a journey and much roaming await you.’
He added, ‘His audition from Masʿud al-Thaqafi was in the year sixty (1).’ When he took up residence in Granada he abandoned public preaching. He left behind a brief treatise on the points of disagreement between Abu Hanifa and al-Shafiʿi.
A drought befell us, so the ruler came to this shaykh of ours and said, ‘Exhort the people; perhaps Allah will grant relief.’ He preached, a powerful spiritual state overtook him, he collapsed, was carried away, and died an hour later. When his body was lowered into the grave, the gates of heaven opened and the valleys ran with water for several days.
I say: He died in Shawwal, 608 AH, in Granada.
260 – The daughter of Maʿmar, Umm Ḥabiba ʿAʾisha bint the ḥadith-master Maʿmar ibn al-Fakhir*
The learned, long-lived musnidah, Umm Ḥabiba ʿAʾisha bint the ḥadith-master Maʿmar ibn al-Fakhir al-Qurashiyyah, al-ʿAbshamiyyah, originally from Isfahan.
She attended in person the narrations of Fatimah al-Jawzdaniyyah and heard at length from Zahir ibn
(1) That is, “and five-hundred.” The scholars of al-Andalus rejected his claim that he transmitted from Masud al-Thaqafi, arguing that Masud himself narrated from al-Khatib, which they considered improbable. Among those who contested the claim was Abu al-Rabi ibn Salim: before the year 600 AH he had written to Abu al-Hasan ibn al-Mufaddal al-Maqdisi asking him to secure for him an ijaza from someone who narrated from al-Khatib. Ibn al-Mufaddal replied, “In our land there is no one who transmits that,” which strengthened Ibn Salim’s objection.
Al-Dhahabi answered this by noting that Ibn al-Mufaddal’s phrase “our land” referred only to Alexandria and Egypt. He added: “Ibn Salim is a hafiz, yet this point escaped him and he relied on what was outwardly available to them of lower isnads. In fact, after 600 AH there were even higher chains than those of al-Khatib: in Isfahan there were narrators from a man who had heard from the hafiz Abu Nuaym—one of al-Khatib’s own shaykhs; in Iraq there were narrators from a man who had heard from Ibn Ghaylan; and in Khurasan narrators from a man who had heard from Abd al-Ghafir.”
(*) Ibn Nuqtah, al-Taqyid, fol. 232; al-Mundhiri, al-Takmila, vol. 2, bio. no. 1149; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam, 18/1, p. 271; al-Dhahabi, al-Ibar, 5/22; Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujum al-Zahira, 6/202; Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, 4/25.