and Shaykh Tāj al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, his brother, Shaykh Zayn al-Dīn al-Fāriqī, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Khallāl, al-Fakhr ibn ʿAsākir, and a number of others.
Al-Mundhirī (1) said: “He was reliable, a ḥāfiẓ, righteous; he produced some fine compilations that he never completed.”
Ibn al-Ḥājib said: “A firmly grounded imam, with vast transmissions; large-hearted despite limited means. He travelled extensively, wrote, and imparted knowledge, and he always referred matters back to what was reliable and pious.”
He held the chair of instruction at the Dār al-Ḥadīth in Manbij; afterwards he settled in Aleppo and assumed the chair of hadith that had belonged to Ibn Shaddād.
I asked al-Ḍiyāʾ about him, and he said: “An imam, ḥāfiẓ, trustworthy, jurist, and pleasant companion.”
I add: He later moved to Damascus and narrated there.
He died in Jumādā I (2) of the year 641 AH and was buried at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn.
- Ibn Abī al-Fakhar — Abū al-Tammām ʿAlī ibn Hibat Allah ibn Muḥammad al-Hāshimī
The noble, long-lived Abū al-Tammām ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Fakhar Hibat Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn
(1) Al-Dhahabi cites this statement here, in his Tarikh al-Islam, and in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, attributing it to the hadith scholar al-Mundhiri; al-Suyuti reproduces part of it in Tabaqat al-Huffaz. Yet the passage is absent from al-Mundhiri’s Takmila li-Wafayat al-Naqala, where al-Mundhiri does not even provide an entry for al-Sarifini. The text is actually found in al-Sharif al-Husayni’s Sila al-Takmila, which adds, “and he copied a great deal in his own hand.” Al-Husayni also writes, “I kept his company for a time and wrote much from him” (see Sila al-Takmila, fol. 3). Ibn Rajab noticed this discrepancy and pointed it out (Dhayl Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 2/229); the reader should take note.
(2) Al-Dhahabi in Tarikh al-Islam (fol. 2) records his death on the sixteenth of Jumada I; al-Husayni places it on the night of the sixteenth (Sila al-Takmila, fol. 3). Ibn Rajab, quoting Abu Shama (the wording is not found in Dhayl al-Rawdatayn), dates the death of al-Hafiz al-Sarifini to the fifteenth of Jumada I (Dhayl, 2/230).
(*) Tarikh Ibn al-Dubaythi (Cambridge manuscript) fol. 172; Tarikh Ibn al-Najjar (Paris manuscript) fol. …