—Abū Muḥammad and Abū al-Qāsim al-Maqdisī—was the shaykh, the imām, the erudite scholar, the ḥāfiẓ, the muḥaddith, the jurist, and the historian famously known as Abū Shāma. He served as the director of the Ashrafiyya Ḥadīth College, lectured at the Rukniyya, and authored numerous valuable works. Among them are his Abridgement of the History of Damascus in many volumes; his Commentary on the Shāṭibiyya; Return to the First Command; separate treatises on the Prophet’s Mission (1) and on the Night Journey; The Two Gardens on the Reigns of Nūr al-Dīn and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn; its Continuation; and other fine and rare compositions (2) that are like ingots of pure gold.

He was born on the night of Friday, 23 Rabīʿ al-Ākhir 599 AH, and he recorded his own biographical entry for this very year in the Continuation (3). There he related his upbringing and early years, his pursuit of knowledge, his hearing of ḥadīth, and his study of fiqh under Fakhr ibn ʿAsākir (4), Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām (5), Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (6), and Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn Ibn Qudāmah (7), as well as the good dreams that were seen about him. He possessed expertise in many disciplines.

Shaykh ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Barzalī (8), the ḥāfiẓ, informed me on the authority of Shaykh Tāj al-Dīn al-Fazārī (9) that he used to say: “Shaykh Shiḥāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma reached the rank of ijtihād. He also composed poetry from time to time—some of it delightful, some less so. May Allah forgive us and him.”

In sum, no one of his age equalled him in personal qualities, piety, chastity, and trustworthiness. His death resulted from an ordeal (10) that had been stirred up against him: they sent an assassin who killed him while he was in a house he owned at Ṭawāḥīn al-Ashnān. He had been accused of a doctrine from which, by all outward signs, he was innocent. A number of ḥadīth scholars and others declared that he was wronged. He continued writing his chronicle until he reached