Al-Dubaythī also narrated from him and said, “He comes from a household devoted to ḥadith; every one of them is trustworthy.”

I add: The last person to transmit from him by written licence was Fāṭima bint Sulaymān al-Dimashqī.

Al-Mubārak ibn al-Shaʿʿār (1) said: “Al-Fatḥ combined refined learning with sound natural talent, yet he was notorious for his Shīʿī inclinations and his excess therein according to the Imāmī school.”

Ibn al-Najjār said: “He was a truthful and distinguished man, an accomplished litterateur of noble character and fine manners.”

Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qaṭīʿī recited to me that al-Fatḥ himself had composed the following lines and had sent them to the caliph al-Mustaḍīʾ bi-Amr Allāh, asking to be honourably released from his service:

O son of the caliphs from the Prophet’s line,
whose learning and devotion surpass all mankind;
O light that shines by God’s command, following the right,
best successor sprung from the house of al-ʿAbbās;
I complain to you of my living—it is clouded,
beset by a tyrant and a digger of rubble;
Each morning every affliction comes upon me
until my breast and very breath are straitened by its pain;
Alas for the twin hardships that have tried me—
the dark turn of my fortune and the grey upon my head.

156 – Ibn Baqī, Aḥmad ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Umawī *
The Imām, the erudite scholar, the ḥadith master and senior transmitter, Judge of the Community, Abū al-Qāsim Aḥmad, son of Abū al-Walīd Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Makhlad ibn ʿAbd