Fakhr Ibn Taymiyya (1)

Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Qāsim (2) ibn Muḥammad, Shaykh Fakhr al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī, the town’s leading scholar (3), preacher, and exhorter. He devoted himself to the school of Imām Aḥmad, mastered it, distinguished himself, and amassed extensive learning. He compiled an expansive Qur’anic commentary running to many volumes, and the celebrated sermons attributed to him are well known. He was the paternal uncle of Shaykh Majd al-Dīn, author of “al-Muntaqā fī al-Aḥkām.”

Abū al-Muẓaffar (4) Sibt Ibn al-Jawzī said: “I heard him on a Friday, after the congregational prayer, exhorting the people and reciting:

[from the Sarīʿ metre]
O cherished friends, my eyes have scarcely found
Either a moment’s sleep—or our longed-for meeting;
Be gentle with a heart in love, and take pity
On the sickness of a body consumed by burning. (5)
How long will you delay me through nights of promised union?
Life has slipped away and still we have not met.”

We have already mentioned that he came to Baghdad on pilgrimage after the death of his teacher Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī and preached there in the very place where his teacher had preached. (6)

The Vizier Ibn Shukr (7)

Ṣafī al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī (ibn al-Ḥusayn) (8) ibn ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ibn Shukr was born in the Egyptian town of Damīra (9), located between Cairo and Alexandria, in 540 AH. He was buried in the tomb adjoining his madrasa in Egypt. He served as vizier to al-Malik al-ʿĀdil and, during his tenure, carried out numerous works, among them paving the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus and enclosing the open-air muṣallā with a wall,