He was born in Aleppo in 553 AH.
He studied ḥadith with Qāḍī Abū Saʿd ibn Abī ʿAsrūn, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṭarsūsī, and Yaḥyā al-Thaqafī. In Mosul he also received transmissions from its preacher Abū al-Faḍl al-Ṭūsī—specifically his Mashyakha and other material.
He learned grammar from Abū al-Sakhāʾ al-Ḥalabī and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Maghribī, kept the company of al-Kindī in Damascus, mastered the discipline, composed a number of works, and his fame spread far afield; prominent imams were trained at his hands.
Among those who narrated from him were al-Ṣāḥib Ibn al-ʿAdīm, his son Majd al-Dīn, Ibn Hāmel, Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn al-Ẓāhirī, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn al-ʿUnayqah, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Dashtī, Isḥāq al-Naḥḥās, his brother Bahāʾ al-Dīn, Sunqur al-Qaḍāʾī, and others.
He was patient, quick of understanding, widely versed in transmission, trustworthy, erudite, intelligent, good-humoured, delightfully witty, yet dignified and composed.
He produced a commentary on Ibn Jinnī’s al-Taṣrīf, another on al-Mufaṣṣal, and other works besides.
He lived ninety years and died in Aleppo on the twenty-fifth of Jumādā al-Ūlā, 643 AH.
In that same year—known as the “Year of the Khwārazmians”—there also died: the jurist al-Ashraf Aḥmad, son of the eminent Qāḍī al-Fāḍil, at the age of seventy; the ḥadith scholar Ṣafī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn Abī Hishām al-Qurashī, aged eighty; the scholar Kamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Kashāsb al-Dizmārī (1), a Shāfiʿī; and the scholar Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn al-ʿIzz