al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥaydar ibn ʿAlī al-Qurashī, al-ʿAdawī, al-ʿUmarī, originally from Ṣāghān, Indian by domicile, born in Lahore, deceased in Baghdad and buried in Mecca; a Ḥanafī jurist and prolific author.
He was born in Lahore, in the month of Ṣafar, 577 AH. He grew up in Ghazna, then travelled to Baghdad. In 617 AH the caliph dispatched him as an envoy to the king of India, and he remained there for some time. He returned in 624 AH, was sent back again the following year, and did not come home until 637 AH.
He heard ḥadith in Mecca from Abū al-Futūḥ Naṣr ibn al-Ḥuṣarī; in Yemen from the judge Khalaf ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥasanābādhī and from al-Naẓẓām Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan al-Marghīnānī; and in Baghdad from Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Razzāz.
He stood unrivalled in his mastery of the Arabic tongue. Among his works are: Majmaʿ al-Baḥrayn (The Confluence of the Two Seas), a twelve-volume lexicon; al-ʿUbāb al-Zākhir, a twenty-volume lexicon; al-Shawārd, one volume on rare expressions; several other books on language; a work on the science of ḥadith; Mashāriq al-Anwār fī al-Jamʿ bayna al-Ṣaḥīḥayn (Eastern Dawns: A Reconciliation of the Two Ṣaḥīḥs); a book on weak narrators; a treatise on the laws of inheritance; and other writings besides.
Al-Dimyāṭī said: “He was a righteous, truthful, and taciturn shaykh—an imam in language, jurisprudence, and ḥadith. I read a great deal to him.”