and the Old Mosque as well, where they took up residence, and from that mosque they came to be known as the Ṣāliḥiyyah.
He heard (hadith) from his own father; Abū al-Makārim ibn Hilāl; Salmān ibn ʿAlī al-Raḥabī; Abū al-Fahm ibn Abī al-ʿAjāʾiz; and a number of others. While in Egypt he studied under Ibn Barrī and Ismāʿīl al-Zayyāt. He wrote, read, gathered material, advanced in knowledge, and belonged to the category of practising scholars and God-fearing awliyāʾ.
Those who narrated from him include: his brother Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn; his two sons, ʿAbd Allah and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; al-Ḍiyāʾ; Ibn Khalīl; al-Zakī al-Mundhirī; al-Qūṣī; Ibn ʿAbd al-Dāʾim; Fakhr ʿAlī; and a number of others.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Ḍiyāʾ compiled for him a two-part biography that leaves nothing wanting, and in it he said (1):
He never heard a supplication without, in most cases, memorising it and then using it; never heard a hadith without acting upon it; and never heard of a prayer without performing it.
On the night of mid-Shaʿbān (2) he would lead the people in one hundred rakʿas, even in his old age, and he had not abandoned the night vigil since the freshness of his youth.
When he travelled in company, the others would sleep while he kept watch over them in prayer.
I say: he was a model, righteous, devoted, constantly worshipping Allah, a rabbānī scholar, humble, sincere, without equal, of great standing, abundant in litanies and remembrance, distinguished by chivalry, magnanimity, and every praiseworthy trait—rarely do eyes behold his like.
It was said that when he engaged in the late-night prayer, if drowsiness overcame him he would strike his legs with a small stick until the sleepiness fled.
He fasted often; scarcely would he hear of a funeral without attending it, of a sick person without visiting him, or of a campaign in Allah’s cause without setting out for it. Each night he would recite one-seventh of the Quran, in a measured tone, during the prayer, and by day another seventh between the prayers; and whenever he performed the prayer—