a jurist, mufti, seasoned debater, and leading authority in several disciplines, vast in learning, yet endowed with devotion, scrupulous piety, humility, patience, and a complete avoidance of affectation.
I add: He left Damascus together with Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām when its governor handed the district of al-Shuqayf over to the Franks. He entered Egypt and assumed the teaching chair at the Fāḍiliyyah school.
Ibn Khallikān (1) said: “He possessed one of the finest minds God ever created. He came to me many times to give sworn testimony, and I asked him about points of Arabic; he answered with consummate eloquence, great calm, and perfect deliberation. He then moved to Alexandria, did not stay there long, and died there on the twenty-sixth (2) of Shawwāl in the year six hundred and forty-six (3) AH.”
I say: Our teacher al-Muwaffaq Ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ completed with him the full recitation of the Qur’an in the Seven Readings.
Hadith was transmitted from him by al-Mundhirī, al-Dimyāṭī, Abū Muḥammad al-Jazāʾirī, Abū Isḥāq al-Fāḍilī, Abū ʿAlī Ibn al-Khallāl, Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Baqqāl, and others.
Many studied Arabic with him, among them our teacher Raḍī al-Dīn al-Qusurṭīnī. His books enjoyed complete acceptance because of their forceful style and fine composition.
Among those who reported from him is Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, who said: “ʿUthmān ibn ʿUmar, the Mālikī grammarian, narrated to me; ʿAlī ibn al-Mufaḍḍal narrated to me; al-Silafī narrated to us that the proper nisba to Duwīn is Dabīlī.”
176 – al-Sayyidī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Muḥammad
The eminent musnid, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sayyidī.