and among their bravest. He thought well of the poor and treated them generously. He was buried in the cemetery of Shaykh ʿAmmār al-Rūmī at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn on the fifteenth of Rabīʿ al-Awwal, while in his early fifties. His khānqāh stood inside Bāb al-Faraj and had a window that opened onto the road. The epithet “al-Shahābī” goes back to the eunuch Shihāb al-Dīn Rashīd al-Kabīr al-Ṣāliḥī.
The Chief Judge (1) Ṣadr al-Dīn Sulaymān ibn Abī al-ʿIzz (2) Wahīb (3) Abū al-Rabīʿ al-Ḥanafī
He was the leading shaykh of the Ḥanafīs in his day, their scholar in both East and West. He resided for a time in Damascus, issuing legal opinions and teaching, then moved to Egypt and taught at the Ṣāliḥiyya, after which he returned to Damascus and taught at the Ẓāhiriyya. He was appointed to the judiciary after Majd al-Dīn ibn al-ʿAdīm and held office for three months. His death occurred on the night of Friday, the sixth of Shaʿbān, and he was buried the next day (4) after the prayer at his house at the foot of Mount Qāsiyūn, at the age of eighty-three.
Among his graceful poetry—composed about a mamlūk who married a slave-girl belonging to King al-Muʿaẓẓam (5)—are the following verses in the basīṭ meter:
O my two companions, stop with me and behold (6) a marvel …
Time has brought among us one of its wonders.
The full moon has risen above the sun in rank (7) …
No height above her lies beyond its stations.
It now matches her in beauty and has become her peer (8) …
Proceeding toward her in the splendor of its retinue.
The difference would have been hard to discern, were it not for a delicate embroidery (9) …
On his temple and the greenish down above his moustache.