When he reached Damascus he would read hadith after the Friday prayer in the Hanbali portico of the Umayyad Mosque, and the people (1) gathered around him (2). He was tender-hearted and quick to weep, so he found great acceptance among the populace. The Banū al-Zakkī, al-Dawlāʿī, the leading Shafiʿis (3), and some of the Damascene Hanbalis (4) envied him. They brought forward al-Nāṣiḥ the Hanbali (5), who spoke beneath the Dome of the Eagle and was ordered to raise his voice as loudly as possible to drown him out. ʿAbd al-Ghanī therefore moved his session to after ʿAṣr. One day, while seated on the teaching chair, he expounded his creed; the judge Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-Zakkī (6) and Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Dawlāʿī stood against him. A council was convened for him in the Citadel (7) on Monday, the twenty-fourth of Dhu al-Qaʿda in 595 AH. They debated with him about the doctrine of ʿuluww (divine elevation), the divine nuzūl (descent), and the question of letter and voice. The discussion became protracted, yet he prevailed over them with proof.

Buzghush, the deputy commander of the Citadel, said to him, “Are all of these people astray and you alone upon the truth?” He replied, “Yes.” Buzghush became angry and ordered him to leave the city. Three days later he departed for Baʿlabakk, and from there to Egypt (8). The millers sheltered him and he taught hadith there, but the Egyptian jurists also rose against him and wrote to the vizier Ṣafī al-Dīn Ibn Shukr, who ordered (9) his exile to the Maghrib. He died, however, before the decree arrived—on Monday, the twenty-third of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that same year—at the age of fifty-nine (10), and was buried in the Qarāfa cemetery beside Shaykh Abū ʿUmar Ibn Marzūq. May Allah have mercy on them both.

Al-Sibt (11) (12) said: ʿAbd al-Ghanī was devout, ascetic, and worshipful; each day he performed three-hundred rakʿas, following the devotional routine of Imām Aḥmad, stood in prayer at night, and fasted most of the year. He was generous and open-handed, never hoarding anything; he would give charity to widows and orphans where no one could see him. He patched his own clothes, preferring to spend on others the price of a new garment (13). His eyesight had weakened from excessive reading and weeping, and in the science of hadith and memorisation he was the unrivalled scholar of his time.