His teaching circle inspired both reverence and composure—so much so that it seemed as though birds were perched upon the audience’s heads. He was compared to Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar and to Ḥamdīs al-Qaṭṭān (1).

He grew old and lived long. It was said that, while warming himself by a fire, he nodded off and was burned to death in 346 AH, at the age of eighty-three (2).

He penned several works in a variety of disciplines and copied many volumes in his own precise hand. Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qābisī remarked, “He left behind seven qintārs of books, every one of them in his own handwriting” (3). Some reported that the ʿUbaydid ruler seized those books and kept them from the people in hostility to Islam; others said that one-third of the collection was saved, for he had deposited it with Ibn Abī Zayd.

I have drawn this account from the History of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Mālikī (4), and Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ also mentioned him (5).

287 – Abū Wahb, the Ascetic of al-Andalus*

Ibn Bashkuwāl (6) gathered his biographical notices in a separate fascicle (7).