al-Fuqahāʾ (The Layers of the Jurists), and Maṣābīḥ al-Hudā (The Lamps of Guidance).

Abū al-Walīd ibn al-Farḍī (1) said: “He was a jurist, grammarian, poet, prosodist, historian, genealogist, sharp-tongued, and versatile in the various branches of learning.

Among those who transmitted from him were: Baqī ibn Makhlad, Muḥammad ibn Waḍḍāḥ, Yūsuf ibn Yaḥyā al-Mughāmī (2), Muṭarrif ibn Qays, and many others. The last of his students to die was al-Mughāmī.

He lived for a period in Elvira, al-Andalus, after which the emir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥakam summoned him, appointed him to issue legal rulings in Córdoba, and paired him with Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā for deliberation and consultation. When Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā died (3), Ibn Ḥabīb became the unrivalled head of learning.

He was a consummate scholar of fiqh and a man of distinction, yet he had no real expertise in hadith and could not tell a sound report from a weak one. It was said that he was lax in his auditions and that most of his narrations were based on little more than an ijāza.

Muḥammad ibn Waḍḍāḥ relates that Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mundhir al-Ḥizāmī told him:

“Your colleague ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb came to me with a sack (4) full of books and said, ‘This is your knowledge; will you authorize it for me?’

“I replied, ‘Yes,’ even though he had not read a single letter of it to me, nor had I read it to him.”