and named it Ḥilyat al-ʿUlamāʾ bi-Maʿrifat Madhāhib al-Fuqahāʾ (The Adornment of the Scholars in Knowing the Schools of the Jurists), a work popularly known as the Mustazharī. He later taught at the Niẓāmiyya (1) in Baghdad, though he was eventually removed from that post.
He was fond of reciting:
[Wāfir]
Learn, young man, while the branch is still tender,
While your clay is soft and your nature receptive;
For honour and glory will be yours in full
When all who listen fall silent—and you are the one who speaks.
He died in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, the eleventh of Shawwāl of this year, and was buried next to Shaykh Abū Isḥāq at Bāb Arz.
Al-Muʾtaman ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿUbayd Allāh, Abū Naṣr al-Sājī al-Maqdisī (2),
heard a vast store of hadith and produced compilations. He was trustworthy (3), accurate in transmission, elegant in handwriting, commendable in conduct, and of a gracious (4) disposition. He studied fiqh under Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī for a time and travelled to Isfahan and other lands (5). He is counted among the foremost ḥuffāẓ, particularly with respect to the textual matn.
Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir spoke ill of him. Ibn al-Jawzī (6) observed, “It is Ibn Ṭāhir who truly deserves such censure more than al-Muʾtaman—what comparison is there between the Pleiades and the dust?”
Al-Muʾtaman (7) passed away on Saturday, the eighteenth (8) of Ṣafar of this same year (9), and was buried at Bāb Ḥarb.