He heard from al-Najjād, al-Khuldi, Ibn al-Sammāk and others. Trustworthy, distinguished and sound in creed, he alone possessed unusually elevated chains of transmission for the Qur’anic readings. He died in Shaʿbān of this year at the age of eighty-nine.
• Ṣāʿid ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿĪsā al-Rabʿī al-Baghdādī, the philologist (1).
Author of “al-Fuṣūṣ fī al-Lugha,” composed after the fashion of al-Qālī’s Amālī, he presented the work to al-Manṣūr ibn Abī ʿĀmir, who rewarded him with 5,000 dinars. Later al-Manṣūr was told that Ṣāʿid was a liar, suspected of fabricating the reports he transmitted, so he ordered that the book be thrown into the river. On that occasion a poet quipped:
qad ghāṣa fī al-baḥri kitābu al-fuṣūṣ / wa hakadhā kullu thaqīlin yaghūṣ
(The Book of Fuṣūṣ has plunged into the sea; so it is that every heavy thing sinks.)
When these lines reached Ṣāʿid he retorted:
ʿāda ilā ʿunṣurihi wamin-hu / yakhruju min qaʿri al-buḥūri al-fuṣūṣ
(It has gone back to its own element; from the ocean depths the gems rise again.)
I say: He seems to have chosen this title in imitation of al-Jawharī’s al-Ṣiḥāḥ. Yet despite his talent, eloquence and learning, he was accused of lying in what he reported, so people rejected the book and it never became widespread. He was witty, irreverent and quick-witted. On one occasion a blind man, wishing to mock him before a gathering, asked, “What is al-jarunfal?” Ṣāʿid paused, realizing the word was invented, then raised his head and replied, “It is that which visits blind men’s wives and never goes to anyone else.” The blind man was embarrassed and the audience laughed. Ṣāʿid died in this same year.
• al-Qaffāl al-Marwazī (2): Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Qaffāl. One of the great Shāfiʿī imams—renowned for knowledge, asceticism, prodigious memory, authorship and piety—the Khurasānī school is traced back to him. Among his students were Shaykh Abū Muḥammad al-Juwaynī, al-Qāḍī Ḥusayn and Abū ʿAlī al-Sinjī.
Ibn Khallikān states that Imām al-Ḥaramayn also studied with him, but this is doubtful: al-Qaffāl died this year at the age of ninety and was buried in Sijistān, whereas Imām al-Ḥaramayn was born in 419 AH—two years after al-Qaffāl’s death—and died in 478 AH, as will be noted later.
He was called al-Qaffāl (“the locksmith”) because he used to make locks. He took up scholarly study only at the age of thirty, after which he applied himself with great diligence. May Allah have mercy on him.