Sharf al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Ahmad ibn Shaykh Kamāl al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Niʿmah ibn Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Ḥusayn ibn Ḥammād al-Maqdisī al-Shāfiʿī.
He was born in 632 AH, heard a vast amount of ḥadith, wrote in an elegant hand, and authored works that were both skillful and beneficial. In Damascus he served as deputy judge, teacher, and preacher. He held the professorial chair at the Ghazāliyya Madrasa and at the Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Nūriyya while retaining the pulpit, and at another time he lectured at the Shāmiyya al-Barrāniyya. He granted authorization to issue legal opinions (fatwā) to a number of eminent scholars, among them the shaykh, imām, and erudite authority, Shaykh al-Islām Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn Taymiyya; he used to take pride in this, rejoice over it, and say (2): “I am the one who licensed Ibn Taymiyya to give fatwas.” He mastered many branches of learning, composed pleasing poetry (3), and wrote a book on the principles of jurisprudence in which he collected a great deal—I possess it in his own beautiful script. He died on Sunday, 17 Ramaḍān, having passed the age of seventy, and was buried in the Bāb Kīsān cemetery (4) beside his father—may Allah have mercy on him and on his father.
On the festival day that followed, Shaykh Sharf al-Dīn al-Fazārī, the preacher of the Jarrāḥ Mosque, delivered the sermon in his place, after which a royal decree appointed Ibn Jamāʿa to the pulpit.
Among the verses of the preacher Sharf al-Dīn ibn al-Maqdisī (5) are:
(6) Make pilgrimage to the blossoms so that you may gain their grace (7) —
Fling the pebbles of sorrow away, roused and resolute;
Whoever fails to circle the blossoms at their proper time
Before he shaves has surely fallen short.
The founder of the Jawhariyya endowment (8), the dignitary [the upright grand judge] (9) Najm al-Dīn, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbās (10) ibn Abī al-Makārim al-Tamīmī al-Jawharī, endowed the Jawhariyya for the Ḥanafīs in Damascus. He died on the night of Tuesday, 17 Shawwāl (11) (12), and was buried in the school he had founded.