he was the blind scholar, author of the Shāṭibiyyah (1) on the Seven Quranic Readings—a composition that had never before been attempted, nor has it since been equalled (2). The treatise is filled with symbolic allusions that are veritable treasures, understood only by a keen and perceptive critic—this, despite the fact that its author was blind. He was born in 538 AH, and his birthplace was Shāṭibah, a village (3) in the eastern part of al-Andalus. He lived in poverty, and the townspeople pressed him to assume the Friday pulpit, but he refused [because of the excessive flattery that preachers (4) lavished on kings from the minbar].
Al-Shāṭibī set out for the pilgrimage and arrived in Alexandria (5) in 572 AH. There he studied under the ḥadith master al-Silafī, and the eminent statesman al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil appointed him as shaykh of Qurʾānic recitation in his school. He visited the blessed Jerusalem, spending the month of Ramadan there in fasting, then returned to Cairo. He died in that city in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of this same year and was buried in the Qarāfah cemetery, close to the Fāḍiliyyah mausoleum. He was devout, humble, ascetic, and dignified, never speaking about matters that did not concern him.
He frequently cited the following verses—a riddle about the funeral bier, not composed by him:
Do you know a thing that soars through the sky,
Yet when it moves, it stirs the people wherever it goes? (6)
You find it both mounted and mounting, while every prince
Who rides upon it is, in truth, its captive.
It urges to piety, yet its nearness is disliked;
The soul recoils from it, for it is a warner.
It is never invited out of longing for its visit;
Rather, it comes despite the wish of the one visited.
[Then came the year 591 AH.] In it occurred (7) the Battle of al-Zallāqah in al-Andalus, north of Córdoba on the Plain of Iron—a great engagement in which Allah granted victory to Islam and humbled the worshippers of the cross. Alfonso (8), the Frankish king ruling al-Andalus, whose capital (9) was the city of Toledo, had written to Emir Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (10), sovereign of the Maghrib, appealing to his sense of honor