among his students were al-Raḍī and al-Ṣaymarī. He had received ḥadīth from Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī and others, and he was reliable and devout, renowned for the excellence of his prayer, following the way of the early generations.

With regard to creed he would say: “Our religion is the religion of the old women; we have nothing to do with speculative kalām.”

He was eloquent and an outstanding teacher. He was offered the judiciary more than once but refused. He died on the night of Friday, the eighteenth of Jumādā al-Awwal in the year 403 AH, and was buried in his house on Darb ʿAbda.

The ḥadīth master Abū al-Ḥasan (1) ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Khalaf al-Maʿāfirī al-Qābisī, author of al-Mulakhkhaṣ (2). His family was originally from Qazwīn, yet he came to be called al-Qābisī because his uncle used to wind his turban in the Qābisī style, and the name stuck to them (3).

He was a memorizer, brilliant in the science of ḥadīth, a righteous man of lofty rank. When he died in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of this same year, people kept vigil at his grave for nights on end, reciting Quran and praying for him. Poets came from every direction to lament him and beseech mercy.

When he was once seated for debate he recited—quoting another:

By your father’s life, high rank is never tied
to generosity while a generous man survives;
yet when the land grows bleak and all its herbage dies,
the livestock graze on nothing but dry stubble.

He then wept and moved the assembly to tears, repeating, “I am the stubble, I am the stubble.” May Allah have mercy on him.

The ḥadīth scholar Ibn al-Farḍī (4): Abū al-Walīd ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn Naṣr al-Azdī al-Farḍī, the judge of Valencia (5). He heard extensively, gathered and preserved knowledge, and authored works of history, al-Muʾtalif wa-l-Mukhtalif, Mushtabih al-Nisbah, and other books. He was the foremost scholar of his age. He was killed, martyred at the hands of the Berbers, and it was heard from him while he lay wounded and prostrate