and night (1); he would fast one day and break his fast the next, and on Friday he completed yet another full recitation, performing it in two rakʿahs in the great mosque before the Friday prayer, over and above the one he finished each day.

He wore fine, high-quality clothes and rode in dignity. Eloquent and beyond reproach in word or deed, he was utterly trustworthy with his hand, his chastity, and his tongue; all agreed on his uprightness and purity. He was expert in the science of judging, a skill he had acquired from Abū ʿUbayd the judge (2).

He took his knowledge of hadith from al-Nasa’i, and his jurisprudence from Muḥammad ibn ʿAqil al-Firyābī, Bishr ibn Naṣr, Manṣūr ibn Ismāʿīl, and Ibn Baḥr; he studied Arabic under Ibn Wallād. So fond was he of hadith that he never ceased attending study sessions. Muḥammad ibn Saʿd al-Bāwardī, the ḥāfiẓ, kept close company with him and transmitted copiously from his works. One day al-Bāwardī reviewed a set of hadiths with him; Ibn al-Ḥaddād admired them and said, “Write them down for me.” He did so, then sat before him and read them aloud. Ibn al-Ḥaddād remarked, “This is how knowledge is taken,” a practice the people praised; his very phrases were collected and his legal opinions compiled.

He authored the book al-Bāhir in jurisprudence, approximately one hundred fascicles in length, as well as a work entitled al-Jāmiʿ.

Concerning Ibn al-Ḥaddād, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Kaḥḥāl said:
Like al-Shāfiʿī in juristic insight, like al-Aṣmaʿī in mastery (3),
And like the Successors (4) in asceticism.

Ibn Zulāq said: Ibn al-Ḥaddād narrated to us the book Khaṣāʾiṣ ʿAlī, by al-Nasa’i. When a certain person’s remark about ʿAlī reached him, he exclaimed, “I was on the verge of dictating that book publicly in the congregational mosque.”