and Abū al-Riḍā Muḥammad ibn al-Mubārak ibn ʿUṣayyah. Ibn Nuqṭah said, “Whoever grouped him with others (1) was mistaken,” as were the grammarian Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn Yaḥyā ibn Muʿṭī al-Zawāwī and Badr Yūnus ibn Muḥammad al-Fāriqī.

183 – Ibn al-Qaṭṭān, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥimyarī *
The shaykh, imām, erudite scholar, ḥadīth master, critic, meticulous verifier, and judge: Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥimyarī, al-Kutāmī, al-Maghribī, al-Fāsī, the Mālikī, popularly known as Ibn al-Qaṭṭān.

The ḥadīth scholar Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Masdī said: “He was one of the leading authorities in this field, of Qasrī origin and a resident of Marrakesh. Within the Almohad state he was the shaykh of the shaykhs of the learned. He gained unfettered access to books and reached the pinnacle of his aspirations. He held the office of Qāḍī al-Jamāʿah during the turbulent changes of those dynasties; his later career effaced the memory of his earlier one, and various motives led to resentments in which people’s honour was violated …” Then he said:

“He studied under Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Zarqūn, Abū Bakr Ibn al-Jadd, and many others; the dark upheavals kept me from meeting him, but he granted me authorisation.”

I add: He also heard from Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Fakhkhār—transmitting extensively from him—Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Nuqrāt, the preacher Abū Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā, and Abū Dharr al-Khushanī (2).

Al-Abbār (3) said: “He was among the most perceptive people in the science of ḥadīth and among the most retentive of them …”