Then came the year 378 AH.

During Muḥarram, prices in Baghdad soared and mortality spread widely.

In Shaʿbān, violent winds and storms arose, toppling many buildings, drowning numerous ships, and even lifting some small boats and flinging them ashore in the area of Jūkha. It was a terrible event—indeed, a calamity that spared no one ⦗1⦘.

At the same time the people of Basra were struck by extreme heat, so intense that many collapsed in the streets and died from its severity.

Among the notable figures who died this year were:

• al-Ḥusayn ⦗2⦘ ibn ʿAlī ibn Thābit, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, the Qurʾān-reciter and ḥadith memorizer. Born blind, he would attend the sessions of Ibn al-Anbārī and memorize everything that was dictated. Witty and well-dressed, he preceded al-Shāṭibī with a poem on the seven canonical readings while the exegete al-Naqqāsh ⦗3⦘ was still alive; the poem pleased him and the leading scholars of that time.

• al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, the judge ⦗4⦘, the foremost Ḥanafī scholar of his day. Distinguished in jurisprudence and ḥadith, he heard from Ibn Khuzayma, al-Baghawī, Ibn Ṣāʿid, and others. He shares his name with the renowned earlier grammarian—may Allah have mercy on them both.

• Ziyād ibn Muḥammad ibn Ziyād ibn al-Haytham ⦗5⦘, Abū al-ʿAbbās, known as al-Khazkhānī ⦗6⦘—with two dotted khāʾs—so called after a village in Qūmis. Some of his family are also styled al-Jurjānī, with two jīms, and others al-Khargānī, with a khāʾ followed by a jīm. Shaykh Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, may Allah have mercy on him, clarified the locations of these places in his work al-Muntaẓam.