71 – Ibn Muḥārib, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qaysī
The shaykh, imam, muhaddith, and itinerant scholar, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥārib al-Qaysī, originally from Granada, though born in Alexandria.
He was born in 554 AH, a date recorded by al-ʿAbbār (1).
He heard hadith from Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, Abū Ṭāhir ibn ʿAwf, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḥaḍramī, and a number of others.
In Egypt he studied under Hibat Allāh al-Buṣīrī; in Murcia under Abū Bakr ibn Abī Ḥamzah; and in Granada under the qāḍī ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn al-Faras and Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Ḥakam.
Abū Muḥammad al-Tādilī granted him an ijāza for what the former had received from Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿAttāb.
He used to assert that he had heard al-Silafī’s Arbaʿīn, yet this only became known after his death. Ibn Rāfiʿ told me that ʿAbd al-Karīm the ḥāfiẓ showed him the original certificate of Ibn Muḥārib’s audition of that Arbaʿīn from al-Silafī. Ibn Muḥārib was deeply devoted to hadith and exacting in its study: he wrote extensively, collected authoritative manuscripts, and lived to an advanced age.
Among those who transmitted from him were Abū al-Qāsim ibn Balbān, the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Muʾmin, Naṣr Allāh ibn ʿAyyāsh, al-Ḍiyāʾ ʿĪsā al-Sabtī, and others.
He and Karīmah al-Zubayriyyah passed away on the same night in Jumādā al-Ākhirah, 641 AH.