to expound the Noble Qur’an each Friday entirely from memory. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Ḥafs ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī al-Bazzār—one of his contemporaries1—said:

“Whenever a few verses of the mighty Qur’an were recited in his gathering, he would immediately commence their explanation; the whole session would pass, the allotted lesson time would be spent, while he was still elucidating part of a single verse. Allah, exalted is He, had endowed him with a grasp of the scholars’ disagreements, their textual proofs, the abundance of their opinions and their independent judgments on each issue, together with what was related from every one of them—whether weighty or weak, accepted or rejected. Thus, when he was asked about any of these matters, it was as though everything transmitted from the Messenger ﷺ, his Companions, and the scholars—early and late—stood vividly inscribed before him. Everyone who met him or examined even a portion of his learning—so long as his mind had not been dulled by ignorance or passion—agreed on this. End of quotation.

He also said: ‘As for his lessons, during my stay in Damascus I never missed a single one. He prepared nothing beforehand to deliver; rather, after praying two rakʿahs, he would sit, praise Allah, extol Him, and bless His Messenger ﷺ in a most pleasing and delightful fashion that I never heard from anyone else. Then he would begin, and Allah would open for him a flow of sciences, abstruse points, subtle insights, fine distinctions, diverse disciplines, citations, and proofs drawn from verses, ḥadiths, and the statements of the scholars. He would critique some of them, establish the soundness of others, refute certain views, clarify the evidence, and quote lines of Arab poetry, sometimes even naming the poet. All the while he poured forth like a torrent, like the sea in full tide, without arrogance, hesitation, or grammatical slip—truly a divine outpouring that left every listener and on-looker astounded. He would remain in that state until he fell silent, and at that moment an awe would descend upon him that made him tremble…’