Ibn ʿAsākir states: His origin was the village of Talfītā (1), and he worked as a terrāb (a dust-collector or gravedigger).
I add: The common people say his name was “Qasīm the garbage man,” but in fact it is Qassām. He was not a zabbāl (refuse collector) but a terrāb from the village of Talfītā, near the village of Manīn. At the outset of his career he attached himself to a young notable of Damascus named Aḥmad ibn al-Jastārah (2) and became one of his partisans. He then gained mastery over affairs, overpowered the governors and commanders, and the reins of authority passed to him until the Turk Yaltakīn (3) came from Egypt on Thursday, 17 Muḥarram 376 AH. Yaltakīn wrested the city from him and entered it. Qassām went into hiding for a time; when he reappeared, Yaltakīn captured him and sent him—[in chains] (4)—to the Egyptian domains. There he was released, treated well, and remained honored in Egypt. Allah knows best.
Among the notable people who died in that year was Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Ḥamdān (5) ibn Mālik ibn Shabīb ibn ʿAbd Allāh, Abū Bakr ibn Mālik al-Qaṭīʿī, from Qaṭīʿat al-Daqīq in Baghdad. He transmitted the Musnad of Aḥmad through Aḥmad’s son ʿAbd Allāh and also narrated other of Aḥmad’s works. In addition, he reported from other shaykhs and was a trustworthy transmitter with a large corpus of ḥadīth.
Al-Dāraquṭnī, Ibn Shāhīn, al-Barqānī, Abū Nuʿaym, and al-Ḥākim all narrated from him. No one abstained from reporting his traditions, nor did they pay heed to the objections some raised when a portion of his books was lost after the Qaṭīʿah quarter was flooded with the black water; he replaced some volumes using other copies. This is of no consequence, for those copies may well have been collated with the originals that were lost. Allah knows best.
It is said that in his final years his faculties declined so that he no longer realized what was being read to him. He was over ninety years old—may Allah have mercy on him.
Tamīm ibn al-Muʿizz the Fāṭimid (6)—for whom his father bore the kunyah “Abū Tamīm”—was one of the foremost commanders during the reigns of his father and his brother al-ʿAzīz, and concerning him