ibn Yahya ibn Bundar ibn Mamīl—originally from Shiraz, later a Damascene, and a committed Shafiʿi.

He was born in Dhu al-Qaʿdah of the year 549 AH.

He received formal authorisation (ijāzah) from Abū al-Waqt al-Sijzī, Naṣr ibn Sayyār al-Harawī, and several others.

He heard hadiths from Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamzah ibn al-Ḥubūbī, the preacher Abū al-Barakāt Khidr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥārithī, Abū Ṭāhir ibn al-Ḥaṣnī, al-Ṣāʾin ibn ʿAsākir, his brother the ḥāfiẓ, ʿAlī ibn Mahdī al-Hilālī, Abū al-Makārim ibn Hilāl, Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah ibn al-Mawāzinī, Muḥammad ibn Barakah al-Ṣilḥī, al-Ḥasan ibn al-Baṭalyawsī, and a number of others.

He possesses a “Mashyakhah,” a catalogue of his teachers selected by al-Najīb al-Ṣaffār, which we have heard in full.

Those who narrated from him include: al-Birzālī, Ibn Khalīl, al-Mundhirī, Ibn al-Nābulusī, Ibn al-Ṣābūnī, and our own shaykhs—Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Yūnīnī, Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Dhikr, Khadījah bint Ghanimah, ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn ʿAsākir, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Irbilī, Abū Muḥammad Ẓāfir al-Nābulusī, al-Shihāb ibn Musharraf, al-ʿIzz ibn al-ʿImād, Abū Ḥafṣ ibn al-Qawwās, Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn ʿAsākir, his grandson Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, and others beside them.

Al-Mundhirī said (1): “He served as judge in Jerusalem and elsewhere, taught, and issued legal opinions. He was the last person to transmit from Abū al-Barakāt, al-Ṣāʾin, and al-Ḥaṣnī, and he alone related more than two hundred fascicles from The History of Damascus.”

The word Mamīl, in Persian, means Muḥammad.

Ibn al-Ḥājib said: “He was one of the judges of Syria who ultimately occupied the office in his own right after a period of serving as deputy.”