al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī al-Baqāʾ ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥusayn al-ʿUkbarī—later known as al-Baghdādī, al-Azajī—the blind scholar, the grammarian, the Ḥanbalī jurist of inheritance, and a prolific author.
He was born in 538 AH.
He studied the variant Qurʾānic readings with ʿAlī ibn ʿAsākir al-Baṭāʾiḥī, and Arabic grammar with Ibn al-Khashshāb and Abū al-Barakāt ibn Najāḥ.
In jurisprudence he trained under the judge Abū Yaʿlā al-Ṣaghīr Muḥammad ibn Abī Khāzim and Abū Ḥakīm al-Nahrawānī. He excelled in fiqh and uṣūl and carried off the palm in the Arabic sciences.
He heard ḥadīth from Abū al-Fatḥ ibn al-Baṭṭī, Abū Zurʿa al-Maqdisī, Abū Bakr ibn al-Naqqūr, and a number of others, and leading imams completed their formation under him.
Ibn al-Najjār said: “I read a great deal of his own works to him and kept his company for a long time. He was reliable, devout, of fine character, and humble. He told me that smallpox had blinded him in childhood.”
His writings include: a Qurʾān commentary; a work entitled ‘Parsing the Qurʾān’; and another entitled ‘Parsing…’