the Umayyad Mosque, thanks to the mediation of the vizier Ṣafī al-Dīn ibn Shukr ⦗1⦘, the minister of al-ʿĀdil; its paving was finished in the year 604 AH.
Among the notable persons who died that year ⦗2⦘ were:
Sharaf al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan ⦗3⦘ ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, known as Jamāl al-Islām al-Shahrazūrī. He passed away in Ḥimṣ after having been sent there from Damascus. Earlier he had taught in the Amīniyya ⦗4⦘ and led a study circle in the Great Mosque opposite al-Barādah ⦗5⦘. He possessed a sound grasp of his legal school and its points of controversy.
Al-Taqī ʿĪsā ibn Yūsuf ⦗6⦘ ibn Aḥmad al-Gharrāfī ⦗7⦘, the blind scholar, also a lecturer at the Amīniyya. He lived in the Western Minaret and was attended by a young man who served and guided him ⦗8⦘. When a sum of dirhams belonging to the shaykh went missing, suspicion fell on the youth, but nothing could be proved against him ⦗9⦘. The youth then laid the charge against the shaykh himself ⦗10⦘, though people had never thought he possessed any money ⦗11⦘. Thus the money was lost and his reputation impugned. On Friday, the seventh of Dhu al-Qaʿda, he was found hanged in his quarters inside the Western Minaret. The people declined to perform the funeral prayer over him because he had taken his own life, so Shaykh Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAsākir stepped forward and led the prayer ⦗12⦘.
(1) He is ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Wazīr Ṣafī al-Dīn ibn Shukr; his biography will appear under the deaths for 622 AH in this volume.
(2) In the printed edition it reads: “wa fīhā tawaffa min al-ayyān” (“and there he died among the notable figures”).
(3) His biography is found in al-Takmila li-Wafayāt al-Naqqāla (2:82–83), Dhayl al-Rawḍatayn (p. 54), Tārīkh al-Islām (13:66), and Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (21:423).
(4) The Aminiyya School was one of the Shāfiʿī madrasas in Damascus, founded by Amīn al-Dawla Kumun’imtakin ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Tughtakī; its endowment dates to 541 AH.
(5) Al-ʿIlmāwī states: “The Aminiyya School lies south of Bab al-Ziyāda (so called) among the gates of the Umayyad Mosque—formerly Bab al-Saʿāt—and east of al-Mujāhidiyya, adjacent to the Qaysariyya of the Qawsīn.” Badrān adds: “Its waqf was usurped; then God provided some tutors for the children, and it became an instructional center. Today, as noted, it houses Mukhtaṣar Tanbīh al-Ṭālib (p. 33) and Munāḍamat al-Aṭlāl (pp. 86–87).”
(6) The biography of al-Gharrāfī appears in Dhayl al-Rawḍatayn (554–555), Tārīkh al-Islām (13:55), al-ʿIbar (5:4), Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (21:422), Nukat al-Humayān (323–324), Ṭabaqāt al-Subkī (8:345), Ṭabaqāt al-Isnawī (1:127), al-Dāris (1:185), and Shadharāt al-Dhahab (ed. Maḥmūd al-Arnāʾūṭ, 7:13–14).
(7) In the printed edition it reads “al-ʿIrāqī.” This is a corruption—attributing al-Gharrāfī to al-Gharrāf—referring to a large river south of Wasit, between it and Basra, with a district containing many settlements (Muʿjam al-Buldān: “Gharf”; see also Dhayl al-Rawḍatayn, p. 54).
(8) In the printed edition: “wayuqādu bihi.”
(9) In the printed edition: “shayʾan”; this is an error.
(10) In the printed edition: “wa-ittahama al-Shaykh ʿĪsā dhālik annahu yalawwat bihi” (“and Sheikh ʿĪsā accused this of obscuring it”).
(11) In the printed edition: “shayʾ” (a grammatical mistake).
(12) In the autograph manuscript it reads: “fa-aḥjam.”