Qays ibn Rafāʿah, who was in turn the client of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Musāfir al-Fahmī.
Al-Layth was, beyond dispute, the foremost scholar of Egypt. He was born in Qarqashanda, a locality in Egypt (1), in the year 94 AH, and he died in Shaʿbān of the present year, having grown up in the Egyptian lands.
Ibn Khallikān reports that his native place was Qalqalashanda (2), pronouncing it with two qāfs, the second carrying a short vowel. It is related that he possessed an excellent mind (3) and that he served as judge in Egypt, [yet thereafter his acumen was no longer praised] (4). One report gives his birth-year as 124 AH, which is exceedingly strange.
They further said that his private estates brought him an annual income of five thousand dinars, while others claimed that his agricultural revenues reached eighty thousand dinars each year, and that no zakāh was ever due upon him. He was an imām in jurisprudence, hadith, and the Arabic language.
Al-Shāfiʿī said, “Al-Layth was more proficient in fiqh than Mālik, but his followers let his knowledge go to waste” (5). On one occasion Mālik asked him to send some safflower for his daughter’s trousseau; al-Layth dispatched thirty loads. Mālik used what he needed, sold part of it for five hundred dinars, and still had some left.
During a pilgrimage Mālik presented him with a tray of fresh dates; al-Layth returned the tray filled with one thousand dinars. He would grant a scholar from among his companions a gift of a thousand dinars, or thereabouts, and when he sailed to Alexandria he and his companions travelled in one vessel while his kitchen travelled in another. His merits are far too numerous to recount here; we have treated him at length in al-Takmīl.
Ibn Khallikān also relates that he heard someone proclaim on the day al-Layth died:
“The lion is gone—no lion now for you; / Knowledge has departed, a stranger, and lies interred.”
They turned around but saw no one.
Among those who also died this year was al-Mundhir ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mundhir (6) al-Qurashī. Al-Mahdī had offered him the judgeship together with one hundred thousand dirhams from the public treasury, but he replied, “I have covenanted with Allah never to hold any office, and I seek Allah’s protection for the Commander of the Faithful lest I break my pledge.”
The caliph asked, “By Allah?”
He answered, “By Allah.”
Al-Mahdī said, “Go then; I have excused you.”