Ibn al-Jawzī said: “He was devoted to collecting the reports of the Sufis. For their sake he produced a Qur’an commentary—crafted in their fashion—as well as a work of Sunan, a chronicle, and a compilation of shaykhs, biographies, and thematic chapters. In Nishapur he owned a house widely associated with him; Sufis lived there and he was buried on its grounds. He then cited people’s remarks about the weakness of his transmissions, quoting al-Khaṭīb who relayed from Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Qaṭṭān: ‘He was not reliable. He had not heard much from al-Aṣamm, yet when al-Ḥākim died he began to narrate many reports from him, and he would fabricate ḥadiths for the Sufis.’ Ibn al-Jawzī added: ‘He died on the third of Shaʿbān of this very year.’ (1)
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Daqqāq al-Naysābūrī (2) used to admonish the people and speak about spiritual states and gnosis. Among his words:
“Whoever humbles himself before another for the sake of that person’s worldly position forfeits two-thirds of his religion, for he has bowed to him with his tongue and his limbs; were he also to bow with his heart, he would lose his religion entirely.”
Commenting on the Almighty’s words, ‘So remember Me; I will remember you’ (Q 2:152), he said: “Remember Me while you are alive, and I shall remember you when you are beneath the earth.”
He also said: “The greatest calamity is that you wish to be wanted yet you are not, that you draw near only to be thrust back and cast far away.”
Reflecting on the verse, ‘And he turned away from them and said, “Alas, my grief for Joseph”’ (Q 12:84), he recited:
We went mad for Layla while she went mad for another;
Someone else is mad for us, yet we desire her not.
Regarding the Prophet’s ﷺ saying, “Paradise is surrounded by hardships” (3), he remarked: “If even a created being cannot be reached without enduring difficulties, then what do you imagine of the Creator?” May Allah have mercy on him.
Ṣarīʿ al-Dilāʾ (4), Qatīl al-Ghawāshī (5), Dhū al-Riqāʿatayn—Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī (6) ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid (7)—was a Baghdadi jurist and a ribald poet. He composed a brief maqṣūrah in jest, parodying the poem of Abū Bakr Ibn Durayd, which includes the lines:
A thousand loads of cast-off goods that give one cover
Are better for a pauper than gleaning scattered date-stones.