Al-Ḍiyāʾ said, “He was noble-minded; hardly would anyone see him without a smile. He told anecdotes and bantered with people.

I heard al-Bahāʾ say, ‘During our reading sessions the shaykh would joke with us and relax. Someone once spoke to him about the youngsters studying under him, and he replied, “They are boys; they need to play, and you were once like them.” He never competed with worldly folk, was seldom heard to complain—though at times he was poorer than others—and he still preferred others to himself.

I also heard al-Bahāʾ describe him as courageous: “He would advance toward the enemy; he was wounded in his hand, and he used to shoot arrows at them.”

Al-Ḍiyāʾ added, ‘He prayed with humility. He would scarcely perform the Sunnah prayers of dawn and the two evening prayers except in his home. Between Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ he would regularly pray four rakʿahs, reciting al-Sajdah, Yā Sīn, al-Dukhān, and Tabāraka, and he hardly ever omitted them. In the last part of the night he would stand for seven rakʿahs, sometimes raising his voice, and he had a melodious voice.’

I heard the ḥāfiẓ al-Yūnīnī say, ‘Because I kept hearing people revile the Hanbalis for alleged anthropomorphism, I resolved to ask Shaykh al-Muwaffaq about it. Months went by while I waited for the right moment. Then I accompanied him up the mountain (1). When we reached the house of Ibn Muḥārib I said, “My master—” and had uttered no more than those words when he said to me, “Anthropomorphism is impossible.”

I asked, “Why?”

He replied, “For likeness requires that we see a thing and then liken something to it. Who has ever seen Allah and then described Him to us so that we might compare?”’

Al-Ḍiyāʾ also related further stories about his miracles.

Abū Shāmah (2) said, ‘He was an imām, a luminary in both knowledge and practice, and he authored a number of books…’