Some scholars declared, “Egypt has never brought forth anyone like Asbagh.” (1)

Abū Naṣr the jurist said, “I heard al-Muzanī and al-Rabīʿ say: ‘Before the arrival of al-Shāfiʿī we used to go to Asbagh and say to him, “Teach us from what Allah—Exalted is He—has taught you.”’ (2)

Muṭarrif ibn ʿAbd Allāh remarked, “Asbagh understood jurisprudence better than ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam.” (3)

ʿAlī ibn Qudayd related—from an informant of his—that “there was estrangement between Asbagh and Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, and each accused the other of slander.”

Ibn Wazīr said, “Asbagh had a venomous tongue; he was like a thunderbolt.”

Ibn Qudayd also said, “Al-Muʿtaṣim issued an order for Asbagh to be brought to him for the miḥna, so he—may Allah have mercy on him—fled and hid in Ḥulwān. On that occasion al-Jamal the poet composed:

‘You folded Asbagh away for an age inside his house;
The sheltering, curtained walls concealed him from all eyes.
In place of his companions and the crowds that once thronged him
You left him only tatters fit for the seats of veiled women.
And when, beneath the darkness, some need compelled him out,
He took a face-veil and the loose end of a woman’s cloak.’ (4)

238 – al-Musnadī, Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad * (خ)

An imām, a ḥāfiẓ, a meticulous scholar; together with Muḥammad ibn Salām he was the shaykh of Transoxiana, Abū