Be patient with the sweetness of love and with its pain, for the true lover is ever censured—yet ever excused. (1)
Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdān (2), the physician known as al-Ṣāʾin,
was one of the assistant instructors at the Nizāmiyya and also taught at the Thiqatiyya (3). He was thoroughly versed in the Shāfiʿī school, the laws of inheritance, and arithmetic, and he produced a commentary on al-Tanbīh. Ibn al-Saʿī records his biography.
Abū al-Najm Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim ibn Hibat Allah al-Tikrītī (4), the Shāfiʿī jurist,
studied under Abū al-Qāsim ibn Faḍlān (5), then returned to teach at the Nizāmiyya and elsewhere (6). He conducted twenty lessons each day, occupied with nothing but teaching and reciting the Quran night and day. Exceptionally gifted and widely learned, he had mastered the school’s doctrine and its points of dispute. He issued the legal opinion that a triple divorce counts as a single pronouncement. This provoked the Chief Judge Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Dāmaghānī (7), who consequently refused to listen to him. He was then sent to Tikrīt, where he stayed for a time, until he was summoned back to Baghdad. There he resumed his teaching, and the Chief Judge Naṣr ibn ʿAbd al-Razzāq (8) reinstated him as assistant instructor at the Nizāmiyya. He continued in his former routine of teaching, issuing fatwas, and enjoying high standing until he died in this year—may Allah have mercy on him.
This, too, is noted by Ibn al-Saʿī.
(1) Edition reads “wa nuʿadhir.”
(2) Manuscripts A and B read “Ibn Ḥamdūn.” Bashar notes that his biography appears in Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 13, p. 772).
(3) The edition has “al-Thaqafiyya,” which is a corruption. It should read al-Thiqātiyya, the Thiqatiyya school in Baghdad, named after Thiqah al-Dawla Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ibri al-Duraynī (d. 549 AH), who was deputy to Caliph al-Muqtafi li-Amr Allāh. The school stood beneath the caliphal palace on the Tigris. He was married to the scholar and muhaddithah Shahdah bint al-Ibri (Bashar).
(4) His biography is found in al-Mukhtār min Tārīkh Ibn al-Jazarī (p. 139) and in Tārīkh al-Islām (vol. 13, p. 783).
(5) He was Yaḥyā al-Wāthiq ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Faḍl ibn Hibatullāh ibn Barakah al-Baghdādī, known as Abū al-Qāsim ibn Faḍlān, a leading Shāfiʿī scholar. He studied under Abū Ghālib ibn al-Bannāʾ and Ismāʿīl ibn al-Samarqandī, taught at the Dār al-Dhahab school, recited from the canonical chains, and died in 595 AH. See Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (vol. 21, p. 257), which provides a useful bibliography of his sources.
(6) Manuscripts A and B read differently. Bashar explains that it refers to the Qaysariyya school, which stood near the school of Shaykh Abū al-Nujayb al-Suhrawardī (Bashar, Kitāb Ḥaḍārat al-ʿIrāq, vol. 8, pp. 100–101).
(7) His biography already appears in al-Wafayāt under the year 615 AH.
(8) He was Nasr ibn ʿAbd al-Razzāq ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī al-Azjī al-Ḥanbalī, who compiled forty ḥadīths for himself. He taught at his grandfather’s school, delivered sermons, authored works on tasawwuf (Sufism), and served as a judge. He died in 633 AH. See Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (vol. 22, pp. 396–399), which includes a bibliography of his sources.