things became confused—there was one ḥadīth I was duty-bound to record, yet I no longer knew which ḥadīth it was, so I set the whole book aside (1).

Al-ʿAbbās ibn Muṣʿab said: “Ibn Shaqīq was a man of encyclopaedic learning. In the early days he was considered one of the most reliable custodians of Ibn al-Mubārak’s works, and he actually shared many of Ibn al-Mubārak’s own teachers—such as Sharīk, Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭahmān, and Qays. He was also among the foremost narrators from Ibn ʿUyaynah. At the beginning of his career he debated the People of the Scripture, to the extent that he copied out the Torah, the Gospel, and twenty-four volumes of the writings of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak. Later he became a frail shaykh (2) who could no longer read, so he would relate only two or three ḥadīths to each visitor.

He added: Ibn Shaqīq died in 215 AH (3).

Al-Fasawī (4) and Muṭayyin recorded the same date.

Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdawayh al-Marwazī said: “He was born on the night Abū Muslim was killed in al-Madāʾin, in 137 AH. He lived in the Bahārah quarter and died in 215 AH.”

Another report places his death in 211 AH, but that is erroneous; Ibn Ḥibbān is the source of that claim.

88 – Ḥajjāj ibn Minhāl, Abū Muḥammad al-Baṣrī (ʿ)
The ḥāfiẓ, the imām, the exemplar, the devotee, the authoritative proof; Abū Muḥammad of Basra,