better known as Ibn ʿUqda. His father had acquired that sobriquet because of the intricate, knot-like turns of phrase he used when discussing morphology and grammar. ʿUqda himself was a pious ascetic, and Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUqda ranked among the greatest masters of ḥadīth memorization.

He heard an immense number of reports, travelling widely to sit with multitudes of teachers. Those who transmitted from him include al-Ṭabarānī, al-Dāraqutnī, Ibn al-Jiʿābī, Ibn ʿAdī, Ibn al-Muẓaffar, and Ibn Shāhīn.

Al-Dāraqutnī said, “All the scholars of Kūfah concur that, from the time of Ibn Masʿūd until the time of Ibn ʿUqda, no one with a better memory than his has ever been seen.”

It is related that he had committed to memory roughly six hundred thousand ḥadīths, three hundred thousand of them dealing with the merits of the Prophet’s Household, both sound and weak. His personal library filled six hundred camel-loads. For all that, he was nevertheless reputed to have Shīʿī leanings. Al-Dāraqutnī therefore remarked, “He was an evil man,” and Ibn ʿAdī alleged that he used to prepare written copies of ḥadīths for certain shaykhs and then instruct them to transmit those texts.

Al-Khaṭīb said: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Naṣr told me, saying, “I heard Ḥamzah ibn Yūsuf say, ‘I heard Abū ʿUmar ibn Ḥaywayh say: Ibn ʿUqda would sit in the Barāthā Mosque (1) dictating the blemishes of the Companions—or, he said, of the Two Shaykhs—so I abandoned his narrations and would relate nothing from him’ (2).”

I (the author) say: I have treated his case in sufficient detail in my book al-Takmīl; all praise and bounty belong to Allah. He died in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of that year.

Aḥmad ibn ʿĀmir (3) ibn Bishr ibn Ḥāmid al-Marurrūdhī (4) — his nisbah derives from Marw al-Rūdh, and al-rūdh means “the river.” A Shāfiʿī jurist and pupil of Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī — whose nisbah points to Marw al-Shāhijān, the larger of the two cities — he produced a commentary on al-Muzanī’s Mukhtaṣar, wrote the book al-Jāmiʿ fī al-Madhhab, composed works on uṣūl al-fiqh, and was an imām whose distinction brooked no rival.