of the mashyakha (shaykhship) of the Kāmiliyya. In his letters he affected an over-refined style and, like his brother, delighted in using outlandishly rare vocabulary.

Among those who received transmission from him was Jamāl Abū Muḥammad al-Jazāʾirī, who heard from him the book al-Mulakhkhaṣ by al-Qābisī.

Ibn Nuqṭa said: “I saw him in Alexandria when he arrived there and the people were listening to him read Sunan al-Tirmidhī. I asked one of them, ‘Is he reading from an autograph copy?’ He replied, ‘The shaykh has said, “I do not need a copy; read on, for I know it by heart.”’

Not long afterwards he voiced some reprehensible remarks disparaging Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and others, so I stopped attending his gatherings.

Ibn Masdī remarked: “He surpassed his brother in the abundance of what he had heard, just as his brother surpassed him in acumen and noble temperament. He was given to asceticism, owned no principal manuscripts, and his teacher Ibn al-Jadd used to support him and give him gifts. Later he went to his brother, lived with him, and—when, as was reported to al-Kāmil, his brother became senile—he replaced him. He compiled a Selected Collection (1) on legal rulings.”

He died in Jumādā al-Ūlā, 634 AH, at the age of eighty-eight.

20 – Ibn Sanī al-Dawla, Abū al-Barakāt Yaḥyā ibn Hibat Allāh al-Dimashqī*

Chief Justice, Shams al-Dīn, Abū al-Barakāt Yaḥyā, son of Sanī al-Dawla Hibat Allāh ibn Yaḥyā al-Dimashqī, a Shāfiʿī, and a descendant of the poet al-Khayyāṭ, author of the Dīwān.