and Radi al-Din Abu Bakr al-Qusantini, and Abu al-Maʿali al-Abarquhi.
Al-Iwaqi (1)—with the hamzah pronounced with a kasrah—derives from Iwah, a small town in the Persian provinces near Maraghah (2); the letter qaf was introduced into the nisbah in place of the final haʾ.
ʿUmar ibn al-Hajib said: “I asked Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Barzali about him, and he replied, ‘He is the ascetic of his age: constant in Qur’an recitation, worship, and striving; detached from the world, and steadfast in his religion.’”
I add: He possessed original manuscripts from which he would transmit, and his understanding and learning were modest.
Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Hakim narrated to us; al-Hasan ibn Ahmad narrated to us; al-Salafi narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Madini narrated to us; Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman the judge dictated to us in the year 409 AH; Abu Ahmad al-ʿAskari narrated to us; ʿAbdan narrated to us; Muhammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Kufi narrated to us; Salih ibn Musa narrated to us; Hisham ibn ʿUrwah narrated to us, from his father, from ʿAʾishah:
“The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘Indeed, among poetry there is wisdom.’ (3)”
He died in Safar of the year 630 AH, at the age of eighty-six.
(1) The base manuscript reads: “tufi al-Iwaqi” (“al-Iwaqi died”). The word tufi is out of place here, for the death date is given only at the end of the entry. It is clearly a slip of the author’s pen while hastily copying from Ta’rikh al-Islam, where the biography indeed ends with the words: “al-Iwaqi—pronounced with a kasra on the hamza—died on the tenth of Safar.” Had the death not been mentioned later, we would have kept the wording exactly as in Ta’rikh al-Islam.
(2) In Ta’rikh al-Islam the author states explicitly that the statement was made by the hadith scholar Abd al-Qadir al-Rahawi.
(3) Shuayb remarks: Salih ibn Musa is the son of Ishaq ibn Talha al-Taymi of Kufa. Al-Hafiz writes in al-Taqrib that he is matruk (discarded). Al-Khatib records the report in his Tarikh 4/54, 8/18, and 14/49 through several chains from Hisham ibn Urwa with this sanad. Al-Bazzar transmits it as well (nos. 2101–2102) through two routes from al-Zuhri, from Urwa, from Aisha, and again (no. 2103) via Ali ibn Harb al-Mawsili, from Abd Allah ibn Idris, from Hisham, from his father, from Aisha. Al-Haythami cites it in Majmaʿ al-Zawaʾid 8/123, adds a reference to al-Tabarani in al-Awsat, and concludes: “The chains given by al-Bazzar are formed of the transmitters of the Sahih, except for Ali ibn Harb al-Mawsili, and he is reliable.”