Saʿdūn al-Qurṭubī, and, while in Baghdad, from al-Kamāl al-Anbārī.
He pursued advanced legal study at the Niẓāmiyya College under al-Sadīd al-Salāmāsī in the discipline of comparative jurisprudence (khilāf).(1)
His keenness of mind and the breadth of his learning became proverbial. His fame spread; he authored books, lectured, attracted large numbers of students, and excelled in mathematics.
It was said that he was occupied(2) with fourteen distinct sciences: he could unravel the problems of al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr, the Ḥanafī compendium; members(3) of the protected communities would read to him from the Torah and the Gospel; the celebrated scholar al-Athīr al-Abharī sat before him and even preferred him to al-Ghazālī.
Ibn Khallikān, himself one of his pupils,(4) stated: “Our shaykh mastered fiqh, the two uṣūl (legal theory and theology), comparative jurisprudence, logic, physics, metaphysics, the Almagest, Euclid, astronomy, arithmetic, algebra, land-surveying, and music—knowledge unmatched by anyone else. He used to teach the Kitāb of Sībawayh and al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Mufaṣṣal; he also had a strong hand in Qur’an exegesis, hadith, and the biographical evaluation of transmitters. Our shaykh Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ was extravagant in praising and venerating him …” Ibn Khallikān carried his praise still further, saying:(5)
“Yet—may Allah pardon him—he was suspected regarding his religion, because the rational sciences had come to dominate him.”
Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa(6) remarked: “He has works of the utmost excellence.” And it was also said: he was