he attended numerous teaching sessions and personally heard hadith from a great many shaykhs. The hadith master ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Barzālī compiled for him a catalogue of his teachers (mashyakha) which we ourselves heard from him in the year of his death. Likewise, the scholar Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī (1) extracted elevated isnāds from his narrations, while the eminent muhaddith Nāṣir al-Dīn ibn Ṭughril prepared for him a mashyakha in seven volumes that lists five hundred and seventy shaykhs—both by direct audition and by ijāzah. The work was read aloud to him and was heard by the leading ḥuffāẓ and others.
Al-Barzālī said: “I read to him twenty-three volumes, omitting duplicated material, and—counting the smaller fascicles—five hundred and fifty fascicles including the repetitions.”
He went on: “He had studied medicine and treated people free of charge. He had memorized a vast number of hadiths, anecdotes, and poems, and he composed verse himself. He served in several chancery posts, then abandoned all of that, stayed at home, and devoted himself to the transmission of hadith. In his final years he became unique in many respects and was easy-going when dictating. Towards the end of his life he endowed his house as a hadith college (2) and allotted some of his charity to the hadith masters al-Barzālī and al-Mizzī. He died on Monday at midday, the twenty-fifth of Shaʿbān, and was buried on Mount Qāsiyūn. May Allah have mercy on him.”
The vizier and later amir Najm al-Dīn: Muḥammad (3) son of Shaykh Fakhr al-Dīn ʿUthmān ibn Abī al-Qāsim al-Buṣrawī al-Ḥanafī. He taught in Buṣrā after his uncle, the judge Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Ḥanafī (4). He was then appointed inspector of the ḥisbah in Damascus and supervisor of the treasury, after which he assumed the vizierate. He later asked to be relieved of that office and was compensated with the rank of amir of ten along with a vast iqṭāʿ, and he continued to be treated with the dignity and dress of viziers. He died in Buṣrā on Thursday, the twenty-second of Shaʿbān (5), and was buried there. He was generous, widely praised, lavish in giving yet stern in acquisition, and profuse in charity and kindness to people. He left behind wealth and children, but they all perished after him and his property was dispersed, [his wives remarried and his houses were occupied] (6).
The amir Ṣārim al-Dīn Ibrāhīm (7) ibn Qarāsunqur al-Jukundār (8) served first as superintendent of the private estate, then became governor of Damascus, from which he was removed six months before his death. He died on the ninth of Ramaḍān and was buried in the whitewashed mausoleum (9) he had prepared for himself to the east of the Naranj Mosque (10).