and al-Khaḍir ibn Ṭāwūs, and the earliest of his teachers was Abū al-Fahm ibn Abī al-ʿAjāʾiz.

Ibn al-Najjār said: “We heard a great deal from him in his own recitation; he wrote extensively, gathered the master manuscripts, copied them, and used to lend me those originals, benefit me, and show generosity whenever I visited him. He was one of the imams of the Muslims, a ḥāfiẓ of hadith in both text and chain, well-versed in its meanings and singular terms, exact in the names of narrators, endowed with reliability, uprightness, trustworthiness and piety, together with intelligence, affability, and readiness to help strangers.”

Shaykh al-Ḍiyāʾ said: “He was a ḥāfiẓ, a jurist, a man of many disciplines. His recitation was the finest and swiftest of all, and when he read his tears flowed abundantly. He was reliable, precise, easy-going, and generous.”

I say: He travelled with his brother Abū Mūsā, and in Isfahan they heard hadith from Masʿūd al-Jammāl, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Muḥammad al-Kāghadhī, Abū al-Makārim al-Labbān, and several others.

Al-Ḍiyāʾ also said: “Al-ʿIzz journeyed with his uncle Shaykh al-ʿImād and stayed in Baghdad for ten years, devoting himself to jurisprudence, grammar, and dialectics. Every Thursday night he would read hadith to the people in the Masjid Dār Baṭīkh; later he moved to the congregational mosque, occupying his father’s former place, and there he read on Fridays after the prayer. He was summoned by al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam; he read to him from the Musnad in the presence of Ḥanbal (1), whereupon the king grew fond of him, bestowed a robe of honour upon him, and authorised him to hold a session in the congregational mosque. He requested a place in Jerusalem for the Ḥanbalīs, so the king granted him the Cradle of Jesus. He was quick to do good and to seek the interests of the community, and his house was scarcely ever without guests.”

Shaykh al-Ḍiyāʾ then recounted several dreams that had been seen about him, all pointing to his felicity.

Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn composed an elegy for him.

He died on the nineteenth of Shawwāl, 613 AH.