In this year: the Kamaliyyah Madrasa in Baghdad—named after Kamal al-Din Abū al-Futūḥ Ḥamzah b. Ṭalḥah, the Keeper of the Treasury—was completed. Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Khall (1) taught there, and the dignitaries and leading figures attended his lessons. May Allah have mercy on him.

[Among the notable persons who died this year]

Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad b. al-Faḍl ʿAlī b. Aḥmad, Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭalḥī al-Iṣfahānī (2). He heard a vast corpus of ḥadīth, travelled widely, wrote extensively, and in Iṣfahān conducted nearly three thousand dictation sessions. An authority in jurisprudence, ḥadīth, Qur’an exegesis, and language, he was a precise and reliable memoriser. He died on the eve of ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā at almost eighty years of age. When the washer intended to remove the cloth from his private part, he pushed it back with his own hand; it is also said that he placed his hand over his private part (3).

Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Rabīʿ [b. Thābit] (4) b. Wahb b. Mashjaʿah b. al-Ḥārith b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Kaʿb b. Mālik (5) al-Anṣārī. He studied ḥadīth, transmitted unique reports from a number of shaykhs, and dictated ḥadīth in the Jāmiʿ al-Qaṣr. He was proficient in many branches of learning. Captured as a child by the Byzantines, they tried (6) to make him utter words of disbelief, but he refused. From them he learned the Greek script and used to say, “Whoever serves the inkwells will be served by the pulpits.”

Ibn al-Jawzī (7) cites some of his poetry—which he personally heard from him—among which, in the kāmil metre, is:

Guard your tongue; reveal not these three—
your age, [your wealth—as far as you can—and your madhhab] (8);
For because of these three you will be tested by three—
one who brands you an unbeliever, an envier, and a denier.

He also said, likewise in the kāmil metre:

A set span of life awaits me that I must reach;
when it is spent and slips away, I shall die.