—one hundred and three years and a single month.
Al-Khaṭīb said (1): “He was buried in the cemetery of Bāb al-Tibn.”
I add: People were still reading to him on the very day he passed away. Muḥammad ibn Abī Shurayḥ—so far as I recall—reported:
“We were reciting to al-Baghawī while his head rested between his knees. He lifted his head and said, ‘It is as though I can hear them saying, “Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī has died,” but they will not say, “The musnid of the world has died.”’ ”
He died shortly after that—or perhaps on that very day.
I also say: He is certainly among those who lived past the age of one hundred—like al-Ṭabarānī and al-Silafī. I have compiled a separate booklet (2) on such scholars, concluding it with Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn al-Ḥajjār.
Along with al-Baghawī, the year 317 AH also witnessed the deaths of: Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar al-Ashʿarī al-Iṣbahānī; the leading Ḥanafī jurist, Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Bardhaʿī of Baghdad; Abū ʿAmr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ al-Ḥīrī al-Naysābūrī; Ḥaramī ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ al-Makkī, in Baghdad; the judge Abū al-Qāsim Badr al-Dīn ibn al-Haytham ibn Khalaf al-Kūfī; the musnid of Isfahan, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn Dakkah al-Faraḍī; the shaykh of the Shāfiʿīs, al-Zubayr ibn Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān al-Baṣrī al-Zubayrī; the muḥaddith of Egypt, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān ibn al-Ṣayqal—known as ʿAllān; the trustworthy Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Faḍl ibn Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr al-Zubaydī, a companion of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr al-Ṭūsī; the ḥāfiẓ and martyr Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmmār al-Harawī, in Mecca; and the musnid of Egypt, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn