And by their abandonment they have stolen the sweetness of sleep from my eyes. (1)
They sought nothing but my death; therefore I cared little for what they sought.

Ismaʿil ibn ʿAli ibn al-Husayn ibn Muhammad ibn Zanjuwayh (2), Abu Saʿd (3) al-Razi, known as al-Samman, was the leading shaykh of the Muʿtazilah. He heard a vast number of hadith and wrote down reports from four thousand shaykhs (4). In spite of his Muʿtazilite stance, he was an accomplished and virtuous scholar.

Among his maxims is the saying, “Whoever has not committed hadith to writing has never even rinsed his mouth with the sweetness of Islam.” He followed the Hanafi school and was skilled in juridical disagreement, the laws of inheritance, arithmetic, and the evaluation of transmitters. Ibn ʿAsakir devoted a long entry to him in his History (5), overflowing with praise and commendation.

ʿUmar, son of Shaykh Abu Talib al-Makki, Muhammad ibn ʿAli ibn ʿAṭiyyah (6), heard hadith from his father and from Ibn Shahin. He was reliable and bore the kunyah Abu Hafs (7).

Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn ʿUthman ibn al-Faraj ibn al-Azhar (8), Abu Talib, known as al-Sawadi, the brother of Abu al-Qasim al-Azhari, died at a little over eighty years of age.

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Tammam (9), Abu Tammam al-Zayni, the naqib of the naqibs, [after his father’s death] assumed his father’s position as naqib in Baghdad.