Shaykh Abū Shāma⦗1⦘ said: “Had he really been an Umayyad of the ‘Uthmānī line, as some claim, Ibn ʿAsākir would certainly have mentioned it, for such a pedigree would have been an honor to his grandfather and to his two maternal uncles, Muḥammad and Sulṭān. If the report were true, it could not have escaped his notice.”⦗2⦘

Ibn al-Zakī studied under Qāḍī Sharaf al-Dīn Abū Saʿd ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn⦗3⦘ and served as his deputy in judicial matters. He was the first to resign that deputyship. He was also the first to deliver the Friday sermon in Jerusalem after King Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn reclaimed the city, as has been noted under the events of the year 583 AH; thereafter he assumed the judgeship⦗4⦘ of Damascus, and the judgeship of Aleppo was later added to his responsibilities⦗5⦘. He supervised the awqāf (pious endowments) of the Great Mosque, but was removed from that post a few months before his death, after which Shams al-Dīn ibn al-Laythī took it over on a revenue-farming basis.

Qāḍī Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-Zakī used to forbid students from studying logic or kalām (speculative theology), and in the Madrasa al-Taqawiyya⦗6⦘ he would tear up any such books he found in their possession. He had memorized al-Ghazālī’s creed known as al-Miṣbāḥ (“The Lamp”) and made his children memorize it as well. He also held a class in Qur’anic exegesis which he taught in the Kallāsah, opposite Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s mausoleum.

A dispute arose between him and the Ismāʿīlīs, and they sought to kill him. He therefore opened a door from his house directly into the mosque so that he might enter it for the prayer. Later, mental derangement overtook him⦗7⦘; bouts resembling epilepsy would seize him until he died in Shaʿbān of this year. He was buried in his own plot at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn. It is said that the ḥadith scholar ʿAbd al-Ghanī invoked a prayer against him, whereupon he was afflicted with this chronic illness and died; likewise, the preacher al-Dawlaʿī died the same year. These two had opposed ʿAbd al-Ghanī, and their deaths that year served as a lesson to others⦗8⦘.

The preacher al-Dawlaʿī⦗9⦘: Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zayd ibn Yāsīn al-Taghlibī⦗10⦘, called al-Dawlaʿī after a village near Mosul known as al-Dawlaʿiyyah⦗11⦘. He was born there in 518 AH, studied jurisprudence in Baghdad according to the Shāfiʿī school, and heard ḥadith: