and that it occupies the loftiest summit of the soaring peaks. Added to this are the many useful works he produced in the hadith sciences, together with the devotion (1) and the praiseworthy manners he embodied. Among his writings are:

“Aṭrāf al-Kutub al-Sitta” (Listings of the Hadiths of the Six Canonical Collections) (2);
“al-Shuyūkh al-Nubl” (The Distinguished Teachers) (3);
“Tabyīn Kadhib al-Muftarī ʿalā Abī al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī” (Exposing the Falsehood of the Slanderer against Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī) (4);
along with many other large and small compositions, separate treatises, and multi-volume works (5).

His pursuit of hadith led him to undertake extensive journeys and travels; he traversed cities, regions, and countries, collecting what no other ḥāfiẓ managed to gather—whether through purchasing manuscripts, commissioning copies, collating versions, or correcting their wordings.

He belonged to one of the foremost households (6) of Damascus, a family whose standing towered high, marked by dignity, distinction, abundant wealth, charitable prayer, and generous donations (7).

He passed away on the eleventh of Rajab at the age of seventy-two. Sultan Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn attended his funeral, and he was buried at Bāb al-Ṣaghīr—may Allah have mercy on him. The funeral prayer (8) was led by Shaykh Quṭb al-Dīn al-Naysābūrī (9).

Ibn Khallikān (10) records that he composed many poems, among them the following, in the metre al-mutaqārib:

O soul of mine, alas! grey hairs have come—
What need for youthful play, what need for love?
My youth has slipped away as though it never was,
And age has settled in as though it never left.
I find myself taken unawares,
While death’s calamity has already descended.
Oh, would that I knew with whom I shall be,
And what Allah decreed for me in pre-eternity.

(11) (12)