and of high standing; when a man was removed from that office he was not styled a reprobate. After relinquishing it he applied himself wholly to learning, to teaching Qur’anic recitation, and to the public audition of hadith.

The ḥāfiẓ Muḥibb al-Dīn Ibn al-Najjār said: “Abū ʿAbd Allāh took up residence in Baghdad and taught from his own writings. Seldom did he compose anything without having most of it fixed in his memory. He possessed a sound grasp of hadith, belles-lettres, and poetry, and he was generous with his books and autograph copies. I kept his company for several years and witnessed from him nothing but excellence, piety, and fine conduct. My eyes have never seen his equal in his mastery of biographies, history, and the chronicles of people—may God have mercy on him.”

I say: Those who narrated from him include Ibn al-Najjār, Abū Bakr ibn Nuqṭa, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Barzalī, the historian ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Kāzarūnī, ʿIzz al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Fārūthī the preacher, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Sharīshī the Qur’an exegete, Tāj al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Gharrāfī, and others.

Among his own teachers, the muhaddith Aḥmad ibn Ṭāriq and Abū Ṭālib ibn ʿAbd al-Samīʿ also heard from him, and he granted an ijāza to the judge Taqī al-Dīn Sulaymān ibn Abī ʿUmar al-Ḥanbalī.

Ibn al-Najjār further said: “He died peerless in his discipline, yet to the detriment of his hereafter.”

He passed away on the eighth of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir in the year 637 AH.

I add: In that same year there also died the judge of Damascus, Shams al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn al-Khalīl ibn Saʿāda al-Khuwaiyyī al-Uṣūlī; the leading traditionist of the time in Shīrāz, Imam ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Abū Saʿd Thābit ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Khujandī al-Iṣfahānī—he was the last person to relate the Ṣaḥīḥ in a full audition from Abū al-Waqt—and the Qur’an reciter of Baghdad, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz