al-ʿAyn), and he neither polished nor revised it, yet scholars continue to draw from his boundless ocean.

Ibn Khallikān said: al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAmr ibn Tamīm al-Azdī (1) was, it is claimed, versed in the science of rhythm and melody, and that opened for him the path to the science of prosody. Another account relates that he once passed by the coppersmiths (2) and derived it from the beat of a hammer striking a basin (3).

He is counted among the ascetics. He used to say, “I shut my door upon myself, and nothing that concerns me passes beyond it.” He also said, “A person reaches the peak of intellect and mental acuity at forty.” And from him it is transmitted: “A man does not perceive his teacher’s mistake until he sits with someone else.”

Ayyūb ibn al-Mutawakkil said: “Whenever al-Khalīl imparted something to someone (4), he would not let him feel indebted, and if he himself learned something from another, he would make it clear that he had taken it from him.”

I say: In our time certain people behave in precisely the opposite manner.

162 – Abān ibn Yazīd al-ʿAṭṭār, Abū Yazīd * (Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī)
The ḥadīth master, the Imām, Abū Yazīd al-Baṣrī, one of the senior scholars of ḥadīth.