several events unfolded, and the judge withdrew into his house for two full years, making the length of his first tenure seven years and some months.

He later re-emerged, the regime having changed, and was appointed once more as chief judge of Egypt in the year 292 AH. He sat in judgment for two months and then departed for Baghdad.

I (the author) say: Ibn ʿAdī branded him a liar, and Abū Bakr al-Burqānī said, “He is among those whose reports are to be abandoned.”

He also taught in Mosul, lived to an advanced age, and remained alive until 313 AH. He reached a little over ninety years of age and spent twenty of those years without holding office.

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Muʿaddal relates that Ibn ʿAbdah once said to al-Ṭaḥāwī, “What is this? By Allah, were I to send nothing but a single pole and have it planted in your alley, you would soon hear the people saying, ‘The judge’s pole!’—that is, they would revere even that.”

I (the author) add: His severity knew no bounds, yet in the field of transmission he is ruined and suspected.

225 – Ibn ʿUbaydah, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbaydah al-Nīsābūrī
The imām, ḥāfiẓ, travelling scholar, and trustworthy authority: Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbaydah ibn Ziyād al-Nīsābūrī al-Shaʿrānī, known as the mustamli (the prompter who repeated a teacher’s dictation).

He heard hadith from ʿAlī ibn Khushram, Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ, ʿUmar ibn Shabbah, Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, and their peers.

Among those who received hadith from him were Muḥammad ibn al-Akhram, Yaḥyā al-ʿAnbarī, Abū Bakr al-Ṣibghī, Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Hāniʾ, al-Jaʿābī, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ibrāhīm al-Zabībī.