When the dawn call to prayer was given, al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil came in to him while he was in the very last (1) moments of life. When the reciter reached the verse, “Sufficient for me is Allah; there is no deity except Him. In Him I have placed my trust” (al-Tawbah 9:129), he smiled and his face brightened, [and he surrendered his spirit to his Lord, glorified be He] (2). He passed away—may Allah have mercy on him, honor his resting place, and make the gardens (3) of Firdaws his abode. He was fifty-seven years old, for he had been born in Tikrit in the months of the year 532 AH. (May Allah have mercy on him) (4).

He was indeed (5) a buttress for Islam, a fortress and refuge against the schemes of the vile unbelievers, all by Allah’s enabling grace. The people of Damascus had never suffered a calamity like his loss; every one of them would gladly have ransomed him with his own children, loved ones, and companions. The markets were closed and the storehouses secured. They then set about preparing and washing his body (6), and all his children and relatives were present, knowing full well that none could equal him.

The one who supervised his washing was the town’s preacher, the jurist al-Dawlaʿī (7), while al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil provided the shroud and all the funeral expenses from his own lawful wealth. All the while his children, young and old alike, wept aloud and called out (8), and the people broke into wailing and lamentation, beseeching Allah and praying earnestly for him.

Then (9) his body was brought out in its bier, placed in a coffin after the ẓuhr prayer, and al-Qāḍī Ibn al-Zakkī (10) led the funeral prayer over him. He was buried in his residence within the Victorious Citadel. His son then began constructing a mausoleum for him and a Shāfiʿī school near the Qadam Mosque, in accordance with his earlier bequest, but the building was never completed. That was when his son al-ʿAzīr (11) arrived while besieging his brother al-Afḍal, as will be explained, in the year 590 AH.

Later al-Afḍal purchased a house for him north of al-Kalāsa, equal in cost to what al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil had added to al-Kalāsa, and turned it into the mausoleum—upon which clouds of mercy poured down and the breezes of divine kindness reached it. His remains were transferred there on the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ in the year 592 AH.