Legal Theory and the Perfection of Arabic Scholarship

(1) He was thoroughly grounded in the school of Mālik ibn Anas, may Allah Most High have mercy upon him.

Ibn Khallikān (2) extolled him at length. He related that he once visited him to give witness testimony while Ibn Khallikān was serving as deputy judge in Egypt, and he posed to him the problem of one condition overriding another. A man might say: in akalti, in sharibti faʾanti ṭāliq (If you eat, if you drink, you are divorced). Why, then, does (3) the divorce not (4) take effect when she drinks first? Ibn Khallikān adds that the Shaykh answered with measured composure.

I say: his compendium (5) on jurisprudence is among the finest of summaries, for in it he threaded together the pearls (6) of Ibn Shās (7). His abridgment (8) on legal theory gathers virtually all the juridical insights of Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (9). Allah Most High has favored me to memorize it, and I have filled notebooks discussing the prophetic hadiths he embedded therein—praise belongs to Allah.

Among his other works are Sharḥ al-Mufaṣṣal, the Amālī on Arabic, and the famed Muqaddimah on grammar, in which he condensed al-Zamakhsharī’s Mufaṣṣal and annotated it—others have annotated it as well. He also authored a treatise on morphology with its commentary, and a work on prosody (10) composed in the same rhyme-scheme as the Shāṭibiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him and be pleased with him.

[Then came the year 647 AH]

During it: al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb passed away; his son (11) Tūrān Shāh was killed; and al-Muʿizz ʿIzz al-Dīn Aybak the Turkmen assumed power, as will be detailed below.

On (12) Monday, the 4th of Muḥarram, al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ (13) set out from Damascus for Egypt, borne in a litter.