Zurʿah, and so the judgeship was conferred upon him. Another report says that al-Muʿtaḍid subsequently confirmed the appointment.

He (Ibn Zūlāq) adds: Abū Zurʿah used to recite protective verses for people suffering toothache, and he would hand the patient a certain herb to place on the tooth so that the pain would cease. He also settled the debts of weak and insolvent borrowers.

I heard the jurist Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥaddād say: I heard the jurist Manṣūr relate:

“I was in the presence of Qāḍī Abū Zurʿah when the subject of the caliphs arose. I asked, ‘Is it permissible for a foolish person to serve as an agent (wakīl)?’ He replied, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Then as the guardian of a woman?’ He replied, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Then as Caliph?’ He answered, ‘O Abū al-Ḥasan! This is one of the questions of the Khārijites.’”

Abū Zurʿah promised a reward of one hundred dinars to anyone who memorised al-Muzanī’s Mukhtaṣar. He is the man who introduced the Shāfiʿī school to Damascus, which had previously been dominated by the doctrine of al-Awzāʿī. He was fond of food, eating an entire basket of apricots and another of figs at a sitting.

He held the chief judgeship of Egypt for eight years, after which he was dismissed and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdah was reinstated to the post.¹

I (the author) say: He died in Damascus in 302 AH.

136 – Abū al-Khayyār Hārūn ibn Naṣr al-Andalusī

In al-Andalus the distinguished scholar Abū al-Khayyār Hārūn ibn Naṣr al-Andalusī, the Shāfiʿī jurist and disciple of Imām Baqī ibn Makhlad,² passed away. He kept the latter’s company for a considerable time and narrated extensively from him, after which he inclined