He was, without exaggeration, one of the pillars of the religion.

When Abū al-Walīd passed away, his student, the jurist Abū Ṭāhir ibn Maḥmish, lamented him with a sixty-line elegy (1).

Al-Ḥākim said: “Abū al-Walīd showed us the inscription on his signet ring: ‘Allah is the guarantor of Ḥassān ibn Muḥammad.’”
He also said: “ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAdī showed us the inscription on his ring: ‘Allah is the guarantor of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad.’”
He added: “Al-Rabīʿ showed us the engraving on his ring: ‘Allah is the guarantor of al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān.’”
And he said: “The inscription on al-Shāfiʿī’s ring read: ‘Allah is the guarantor of Muḥammad ibn Idrīs.’” (2)

This chain of transmission is authentic.

Abū al-Walīd died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal of the year 349 AH, at the age of seventy-two.

Al-Ḥākim commented: “He is Abū al-Walīd al-Qurashī al-Umawī al-Shāfiʿī, the leading ḥadīth authority in Khurāsān, the most ascetic and devout scholar I ever met. He studied jurisprudence in Baghdad under Ibn Surayj.” (3)

I say: Those who died the same year include the scholar of Isfahān, the judge Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAssāl; the ḥadīth master of Khurāsān, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Zayd al-Naysābūrī; the chief transmitter of the age in Egypt, Abū al-Fawāris Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Sindī al-Ṣābūnī; the Musnid of Baghdad, Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Yaḥyā al-Adamī al-ʿAṭashī; Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khurāsānī; the Musnid of Damascus, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ Sinān al-Makhzūmī; the senior Qurʾān reciter, Abū Ṭāhir ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Abī Hāshim; and the long-lived