He was a vile man (1); assay him and you will find him falling back into hypocrisy, as hard-set as the very cross.
Tomorrow he will come upon the end for which he strove, and in the Blaze he will be given to drink festering pus—crucified (2).
He also composed—in the wāfir metre—the following:
We passed with Time through lovely days,
drifting upon their pleasures as though swimming.
But once they slipped away, it seemed to me
that, with their waning, I had been dreaming and asleep.
Old age has pitched its tent beside me and will not depart,
though I shower it with blame and reproach.
A guest, ever distant, yet unceasing (3),
each day it drives me a step closer to ruin.
I once counted my span by years upon years,
but now I reckon it day by day (4).
Al-ʿIzz Muḥammad, son of the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī (5).
He was born in 566 AH. His father ensured he heard a great deal of hadith, and he later journeyed on his own to Baghdad, where he studied the Musnad of Aḥmad. He held a teaching circle in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, was numbered among al-Muʿaẓẓam’s companions, and was righteous, devout, scrupulous, and a ḥāfiẓ of hadith—may Allah have mercy on him and on his father.
Abū al-Futūḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Mubārak (6), al-Jalājulī (7) of Baghdad, heard extensively, and was
(1) In edition ṭ. the reading is “ṭabīb”; in editions a and b it is “ḥabīb.” This note does not appear in al-Rawḍatayn.
(2) This hemistich does not occur in ṭ. In al-Rawḍatayn it continues: “Abū Shāma said….” I said: “The first salīb refers to the Christians, the second to the crucified, the third derives from ṣalābah (hardness), and the fourth to the crushing of bones. It has also been said that it denotes ṣadīd (pus), i.e. that what flows from the denizens of Hell is given to drink. May God protect us from it.”
(3) In ṭ. it reads al-taʾānī.
(4) This hemistich is not present in b.
(5) The biography of al-ʿIzz al-Maqdisī appears in: Takmīlatu al-Mundhirī (vol. 2, p. 385); the supplement to al-Rawḍatayn (p. 99); Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 13, p. 383); Tadhkirat al-Huffāẓ (vol. 4, pp. 1401–02); Sīrat Aʿlām al-Nublāʾ (vol. 12, pp. 42–44); al-Mukhtaṣar al-Muḥtāj ilayh (vol. 1, p. 82); al-Wāfī bi’l-Wafayāt (vol. 3, p. 266); the supplement to Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila (vol. 2, pp. 90–92); al-Nujūm al-Zāhira (vol. 5, pp. 56–57); Shadharāt al-Dhahab (vol. 7, p. 104).
(6) The biography of Ibn al-Jallājī appears in: Takmīlatu al-Mundhirī (vol. 2, p. 344); the supplement to al-Rawḍatayn (p. 99); Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 13, p. 351); al-Mukhtaṣar al-Muḥtāj ilayh (vol. 1, pp. 100–01); Sīrat Aʿlām al-Nublāʾ (vol. 22, p. 52); al-Nujūm al-Zāhira (vol. 6, p. 215); Shadharāt al-Dhahab (vol. 7, p. 97). Bashshār notes: “The author mentioned him under the deaths of that year following Abū Shāma in the supplement to al-Rawḍatayn, but was mistaken. The correct date of his death is the past year 612 AH, as recorded by Ibn al-Dubaythī in his Tārīkh (MS fol. 91) and by al-Mundhirī in his supplement (vol. 2, p. 344). Al-Mundhirī states: ‘On the 14th of Ramadan the venerable Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ʿAlī died in Bayt al-Maqdis and was buried there.’ The same is reported by al-Dhahabī in his works and by later transmitters such as Ibn Taghrī Birdī and Ibn ʿImād.”
(7) In ṭ. it appears as “al-khalākhilī,” a corruption. Al-Mundhirī relates: “Our shaikh, the ḥāfiz Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Mufaddal al-Maqdisī, heard him say that his grandfather had a melodious Qurʾanic recitation, hence he was known as al-Jallājī. There is no basis for what the editors of al-Nujūm al-Zāhira claimed, that it derives from Jallājil, a mountain in the Dhahnāʾ region.”