the Egyptian, al-Buwayṭī, the close companion of Imām al-Shāfiʿī; he stayed with him for a long time, completed his studies under him, and outshone his peers.
He narrated from Ibn Wahb, al-Shāfiʿī, and others.
Those who transmitted from him include: al-Rabīʿ al-Murādī, Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī, Abū Muḥammad al-Dārimī, and Abū Ḥātim—who said, “He is ṣadūq” (1)—as well as Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Fīl, al-Qāsim ibn Hāshim al-Simsār, and many others.
He was an imām in knowledge, a model in practice, ascetic and devoted to his Lord, given to night prayer, constant in remembrance, and ever absorbed in fiqh.
We have been informed that al-Shāfiʿī said, “None of my companions is more knowledgeable than al-Buwayṭī.”
Al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān remarked, “Al-Buwayṭī’s lips were always moving in the remembrance of Allah, and I have never seen anyone more adept at drawing proof from the Book of Allah than he (2)!”
I once saw him riding a mule, an iron collar around his neck, fetters on his legs, and between the collar and him a chain to which a brick (3) weighing forty ratls was fastened. Even so, he was saying, “Allah created the creation only by the command ‘Be!’ If that command itself were created, it would be as though a created thing produced another created thing. By Allah, if I am brought before him”—meaning the Caliph al-Wāthiq—“I will speak the truth to him, and I will die in these irons until a people come to know that men have died in this cause while still in their shackles.”