Al-Ḥajjār Ibn al-Shuhnah:
The venerable, widely travelled, long-lived hadith authority, Shihab al-Din Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad (1) ibn Abī Ṭālib ibn Niʿmah ibn Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Bayān al-Dayr Maqrinī, later al-Ṣāliḥī, the mason known as Ibn al-Shuhnah. He auditioned Sahih al-Bukhari with al-Zabīdī in 630 AH at Qāsiyūn, yet news of this audition only surfaced in 706 AH. The hadith scholars rejoiced and flocked to him, so Sahih al-Bukhari was read to him about sixty times, together with many other works.
We ourselves heard from him at the Ashrafiyya Dār al-Ḥadīth during the winter sessions—some five hundred fascicles—by both ijāzah and direct audition. His own teachers included al-Zabīdī and Ibn al-Lattī, and he held an ijāzah from Baghdad listing 138 senior musnid shaykhs with elevated chains. For roughly twenty-five years he served as the head of the masons, but in his final years he became somewhat erratic. When he devoted himself to public hadith transmission, his stipend was secured. Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir listened to him, bestowed a robe of honour upon him with his own hand, and countless people from Egypt and Syria heard from him, deriving great benefit.
He was a fine-looking shaykh, pure-hearted and fully vigorous, living a verified one hundred years and more. He had heard Sahih al-Bukhari from al-Zabīdī in 630 AH and transmitted it himself in 730 AH, on the ninth of Ṣafar, in the Great Mosque of Damascus; we too listened to him that day—praise be to Allah. It is said that he witnessed the death of al-Muʿaẓẓam ʿĪsā ibn al-ʿĀdil, hearing people exclaim, “The Muʿaẓẓam has died.” Al-Muʿaẓẓam in fact died in 624 AH.
Al-Ḥajjār passed away on Monday, the twenty-fifth of Ṣafar this year. The funeral prayer was held for him in the Muẓaffarī Mosque on Tuesday, and he was buried in his own plot near the Rūmī zawiya (2), beside the Afram Mosque (3). His funeral was thronged (may Allah have mercy on him).
Shaykh Najm al-Dīn (4) ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (5) ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn (6) Naṣr al-Mawṣilī (7), known as Ibn al-Shaḥḥām, pursued his studies in his hometown, then travelled and resided in the city of Sarāw (8) within the kingdom of Ardabīl (9). He subsequently came to Damascus in 724 AH, taught first at the outer Ẓāhiriyya and then at the Jārūkhiyya, and was also appointed shaykh of the Ribāṭ al-Qaṣr (10). He afterwards took up residence