the presence of the judge Abū al-Ḥusayn. One day we came, as was our custom, and sat outside his door. A Bedouin was there too, seemingly waiting to ask for something, when a crow landed on a date-palm inside the courtyard, let out a shrill caw, and then flew away.

The Bedouin said, “That crow is announcing that the owner of this house will die in seven days.”

We scolded him, so he rose and left. Shortly afterward the judge’s usher came out to us and said, “Come in.” We entered and found the judge pale and troubled.

We asked, “What is the matter?”

He replied, “Last night I saw in a dream a person saying:

The dwellings of the family of Ḥammād ibn Zayd—
upon your people and every blessing be peace.

Because of this my heart has become constricted.”

We prayed for him and withdrew. On the seventh day after that he was buried. (1)

He passed away on Thursday, the seventeenth of Shaʿbān of this year, at the age of thirty-nine. His son Abū Naṣr led the funeral prayer and then succeeded him as judge.

Al-Ṣūlī said, “Judge Abū al-Ḥusayn reached a remarkable degree of learning despite his youth. When he died, al-Rāḍī wept for him in our presence and said, ‘Whenever something weighed heavily on me, he would make it easy for me.’ He then added, ‘By Allah, I shall not remain after him.’” (2)

Ibn Shanabūdh the Qur’an-reciter (3)—Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ayyūb ibn al-Ṣalt, Abū al-Ḥasan, known as Ibn Shanabūdh—transmitted from Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, Bishr ibn Mūsā, and many others. He favored certain readings that the scholars of his time rejected, and Abū Bakr ibn al-Anbārī wrote a book refuting him. (4)

As mentioned earlier, (5) a session was convened for him in the residence of the vizier Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muqla, where he was beaten until he recanted many of the anomalous readings that the reciters of his age had condemned.

He died in the month of Ṣafar of this same year.