to the Tāj, and that day proved momentous—an ordeal of overwhelming scale. People lost immense fortunes, and large numbers of the inhabitants of Baghdad and the surrounding villages perished beneath the collapsed buildings. Riding the torrent came great quantities of lumber, wild beasts, and snakes. Many houses on both banks fell, countless graves were submerged—among them the Khayzurān cemetery and the cemetery of Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. Water poured through the windows of the al-ʿAḍudī bimaristan, the flood caused heavy damage in Mosul, and when it struck the wall of Sinjār it demolished it and swept its gate a distance of four parasangs (1).

In Dhu al-Ḥijjah a violent wind lashed Basra, uprooting nearly five thousand palm trees (2).

Among the notable figures who died this year were:

• Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad (3), Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Simnānī, an Ashʿarī Ḥanafī. Ibn al-Jawzī commented, “This is most unusual.” The Chief Judge, Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Dāmghānī, had married his daughter to him and appointed him deputy judge. He was trustworthy, distinguished, of dignified bearing, and had passed eighty years of age.

• ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Sulaymān, Abū Muḥammad al-Kattānī (4), the Damascene ḥāfiẓ. He heard a vast amount of hadith, wrote prolifically, and authored works of real merit, especially on the virtues; yet some of his transmissions are fabricated and he did not point this out. Even so, he was reliable, precise, a memorizer, truthful, upright in conduct and belief, and followed the Salafī creed. He would dictate from memory, and the ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb transmitted from him.

• Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Jaʿfar (5), Abū Bakr al-ʿAṭṭār, the Isfahanī ḥāfiẓ and scribe of Abū Nuʿaym. He amassed extensive learning and used to dictate from memory. Al-Khaṭīb recorded a single hadith from him. Held in high esteem in his homeland, he was trustworthy, noble, and eminent. He passed away in this same year—may Allah, exalted is He, have mercy on him.