Muḥammad ibn Ḥayyawayh, Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī—Juwayn being one of the villages of Nishapur—who was surnamed Imām al-Ḥaramayn because he stayed in Mecca for four years.

He was born in 419 AH. He heard hadith and studied jurisprudence with his father, Shaykh Abū Muḥammad al-Juwaynī, then succeeded him in his teaching circle. He also studied under Qāḍī Ḥusayn, travelled to Baghdad where he pursued further legal studies and transmitted hadith, and from there went on to Mecca, residing beside the Sacred Mosque for four years. When he returned to Nishapur the offices of teaching, preaching, and the Friday pulpit were handed over to him. He authored The Culmination of the Quest in Mastery of the School (Nihāyat al-maṭlab fī dirāyat al-madhhab), The Proof in the Principles of Jurisprudence (al-Burhān fī uṣūl al-fiqh), and many other works in diverse sciences. Students thronged to him from every land, and some three hundred jurists would sit in his circle. I have set out his full biography in the Ṭabaqāt.

He died on the twenty-fifth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of this year at the age of fifty-seven. He was first buried in his house, then moved to rest beside his father—may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

Ibn Khallikān said:

His mother was a bondwoman whom his father purchased with money earned by copying books, and he ordered her never to let anyone else nurse him. One day a woman entered the house and suckled him; Shaykh Abū Muḥammad immediately seized the child, turned him upside down, pressed his hand on his stomach, inserted his finger into his throat, and did not stop until he had vomited up every drop of her milk.

He added: At times, during disputations, Imām al-Ḥaramayn would feel a slackening or pause and say, “This is a trace of that single suckling.”

He further said: After he returned from the Ḥijāz to Nishapur, the miḥrāb, the pulpit, the Friday sermon, the teaching chair, and the session of exhortation every Friday were entrusted to him, and he retained them for thirty years without rival. He wrote in every field; among his compositions is the Nihāyah, the like of which has never been produced in Islam.

Abū Jaʿfar the ḥāfiẓ (1) said: I heard Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Fīrūzābādī say to Imām al-Ḥaramayn, “O benefactor of the people of East and West, today you are the Imām of the imāms.”

Among his works are: The Comprehensive Book on the Foundations of Religion (al-Shāmil fī uṣūl al-dīn), The Epitome of the Taqrīb (Talkhīṣ al-taqrīb), The Irshād, The Niẓāmiyyah Creed (al-ʿAqīdah al-Niẓāmiyyah), The Relief of the Nations (Ghiyāth al-umam), The Relief of Creation (Ghiyāth al-khalq), and other works that he completed, as well as titles he named but never finished.

He continued: When he died in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of 478 AH, his son Abū al-Qāsim led the funeral prayer; the markets were closed, and his four hundred students broke their pens and inkwells and remained so for a full year. Many lamentations were composed for him, among them the words of one poet:

The hearts of all mankind are set upon the brazier,
And the days of creation have become like the nights. (2)