He—may Allah have mercy on him—was passionately attached to love-poetry and to expressions of affection. He possessed a refined taste in that field and subjected himself to astonishing spiritual disciplines that eventually disturbed his natural constitution.

Al-Sulamī said: “I heard Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan relate that he heard al-Shiblī say: ‘I know of a man who did not enter this vocation until he had spent all his wealth, had drowned seventy qimṭārs (1) of his own writings in the Tigris before your very eyes, had memorised the Muwaṭṭaʾ, and had recited the Qur’an in a number of different modes—meaning: he himself (2).’”

He was asked, “What is the mark of the real knower (ʿārif)?” He replied, “His breast is expanded, his heart is wounded, and his body is left discarded.”

He passed away in Baghdad in 334 AH, at a little over eighty years of age.

191 – al-Zaydī, Abū Aḥmad Ḥāmid ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad *

The Imām, ḥadīth master, critic, and meticulous scholar: Abū Aḥmad Ḥāmid ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Marwazī, famed as al-Zaydī because of his devoted collection of the ḥadīths of Zayd ibn Abī Unaysa.

He resided in Tarsus as a frontier defender, and in Baghdad he transmitted from Muḥammad ibn Naṣr ibn Shaybah, Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad ibn Ḥamduwayh, Aḥmad ibn Sūrah al-Marāwazah, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Salm al-Aṣbahānī, and Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Dimashqī.