ibn Samāʿah ibn Farwah ibn Qaṭan ibn Diʿāmah, Abū Bakr al-Anbārī, author of The Book of Pause and Resumption (Kitāb al-Waqf wa-l-Ibtidāʾ) (1) and other compilations.

He was an ocean of knowledge in language and Arabic—indeed, in tafsīr, ḥadīth (2), and many other fields. He studied under al-Kudaymī, Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī, Thaʿlab, and others. A trustworthy, truthful, and cultured scholar, devout, virtuous, and firmly rooted in the Sunnah, he ranked among the most learned of people in grammar and literature and among those with the greatest powers of memorization. His written excerpts filled vast volumes—loads fit for pack-camels. To safeguard his memory he ate nothing but dried fruits and nuts and would not drink water until shortly before ʿAṣr.

It is said that he had committed to memory one hundred and twenty Qurʾānic commentaries, that he memorized The Interpretation of Dreams in a single night, and that each Friday he could fix in mind ten thousand pages. He passed away on the eve of ʿĪd al-Naḥr of this same year.

Umm ʿĪsā bint Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī (3)

She was a learned and virtuous woman who issued fatwas in jurisprudence. She died in the month of Rajab that year and was buried beside her father—may Allah have mercy on them both.

[Then came the year 329 AH.]

In the middle of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that year the caliph al-Rāḍī bi-llāh (4)—the Commander of the Faithful, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad (5) ibn al-Muqtadir bi-llāh Jaʿfar ibn al-Muʿtaḍid bi-llāh Aḥmad ibn al-Muwaffaq Abī Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil ibn Muḥammad al-Muʿtaṣim ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd ibn al-Mahdī ibn al-Manṣūr, the ʿAbbāsid—passed away.

He had been invested with the caliphate after his uncle al-Qāhir when six days of Jumādā al-Ūlā 322 AH had elapsed. His mother was a Byzantine concubine named Ẓalūm. Born in Rajab 297 AH, his reign lasted six years, ten months, and ten days.