give in charity, who will give on your behalf? And the beggar—if you do not give to him, someone else will.

He and his companions were once in a tent during the siege of Jerusalem. Al-Malik al-ʿĀdil came to visit him but did not find him, so he sat waiting for an hour while the shaykh was in prayer. They went after him twice, yet he did not return. Some loaves were then brought for al-ʿĀdil; he ate, rose, and left, and the shaykh never appeared.

Al-Ṣarīfīnī said, “I have never seen anyone so completely free of affectation as Shaykh Abū ʿUmar.”

Shaykh al-ʿImād said: “I heard my brother, the ḥāfiẓ (1), say: When someone visits us we become preoccupied with him and neglect our regular devotions, whereas my uncle Abū (2) ʿUmar combines the concerns of this world and the Next: he mingles with people yet never abandons his litanies.”

I say: He used to deliver the Friday sermon in the Muẓaffarī Mosque, moving the congregation to tears, and he would sometimes compose the sermon himself. He recited hadith rapidly without a trace of mispronunciation, and hardly would a traveler return without reading to him something from his own auditions. He copied many works in his graceful script, such as al-Ḥilyah, Ibn Baṭṭah’s al-Ibānah, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl, al-Mughnī, and several copies of the Qur’an.

At times he would write two large notebooks in a single day, and he interceded for people with petitions he addressed to the Governor al-Muʿtamid and others.

Once he led the prayer for rain at al-Maghārah; a downpour then came that sent the valleys flowing, and he remarked, “Since the day I first led the prayer I have never omitted ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.’”

Al-Ḍiyāʾ has recorded for him a number of miracles and answered supplications, and he related two accounts indicating that the shaykh was raised to the rank of quṭb (3) near the end of his life.

Whenever he heard of a wrongdoing he strove to remove it, and he would write about it