the Hāshimite, their client—though some said he was in fact the client of the Banū Tamīm—; a Sufi from Damascus, renowned for extraordinary spiritual states and mystical unveilings.

He kept the company of Qāsim al-Juʿī, narrated from him, and likewise from Shuʿayb ibn ʿAmr and Muʾammal ibn Yihāb. Among those who transmitted from him were Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dujānah, his brother Abū Zurʿah, Abū Aḥmad ibn al-Nāṣiḥ, Abū Hāshim the tutor, and others, including the ascetic Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Bābsharqī, who was known as “al-Muʿallim.”

Abū Aḥmad ibn al-Nāṣiḥ said, “For fifty years he never leaned back against anything, nor did he ever stretch out his legs, out of reverence for Allah, Exalted is He.”

It is also said that at al-Ḥadaʿshariyya (1) he spread his cloak on the surface of the water, prayed upon it, and the cloak did not become wet. This account was related by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Naṣr from ʿUmar ibn al-Burrī—and Allah knows best. Others asserted that the earth would be folded up for him.

Ibn ʿAsākir has recorded his life in full. He died in 301 AH—may Allah have mercy on him—being in his eighties.

56 – Ibn Bassām, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Baghdādī: the erudite scholar, the refined littérateur, the eloquent historian, the keeper of books, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī.