It is said that he had committed to memory al-Tanbīh, the well-known primer of Shāfiʿī jurisprudence. I have also mentioned him in my Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya.

Qāḍī [Ibn Khallikān] (1) states: “His followers display astonishing feats: they swallow live snakes; they climb down into blazing tannūr ovens (2) and extinguish them; and it is further related (3) that, in their homeland, they ride lions.”

He adds: “Shaykh Aḥmad left no direct offspring; the line continued through his brother, and that brother’s descendants have inherited the office of shaykh in those regions.”

Among the verses attributed to Shaykh Aḥmad is the following (4):

[long meter]
When night descends, my heart roams with thoughts of you;
I lament as the ring-dove laments.
Above me a cloud pours down care and sorrow,
while beneath me seas of tears surge and overflow. (5)

[Ask Umm ʿAmr how her captive spent the night:
prisoners are released before him while he remains in fetters.
He is neither slain—​for in death there is repose—​
nor granted pardon so that he might be set free.] (6)(7)

Another of his poems runs (8):

[long meter]
I grow jealous of her father and mother,
of anyone who approaches her or merely looks at her.
I even envy the mirror she holds in her palm
whenever it beholds the very image that I behold.

He remained in that condition (9) until he passed away—may Allah exalted be He have mercy upon him—on Thursday, the twenty-second of Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year. (10)

Khalaf ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Masʿūd ibn Bashkuwāl (11), Abū al-Qāsim al-Qurṭubī, the ḥāfiẓ, traditionist, and historian, author of numerous works: