Its title is al-Talkhīs fī ʿUlūm al-Balāgha (The Compendium on the Sciences of Eloquence) (1), in which he produced an abridgement of Al-Miftāḥ by al-Sakkākī (2). He was a repository of every virtue, and he died when he was nearly seventy—or just past that (3).
[Among those who also died this year, on Sunday the 4th of Dhū al-Ḥijja, was]
the Shaykh, imām, and ḥāfiẓ Ibn al-Barzālī: ʿIlm al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad al-Qāsim (4) ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Barzālī, the Shāfiʿī historian of Syria.
He was born in the year of Shaykh Abū Shāmah’s death, 665 AH. He composed a chronicle that serves as a continuation of Shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn’s work, beginning with that scholar’s death—coinciding with al-Barzālī’s own birth—and extending up to his own demise in the present year.
He passed away while in a state of iḥrām (5); he was washed, shrouded without his head being covered, and the people carried his bier while weeping around him. It was a day long remembered. He had received transmission from well over a thousand shaykhs. The ḥadīth scholar Shams al-Dīn ibn Saʿd began compiling for him a mashyakhah (a register of his teachers) but did not finish it. Al-Barzālī read extensively, narrated copiously, wrote in a fine hand, and possessed noble character. Judges and scholars alike held him in high esteem.
I heard the eminent Ibn Taymiyya say: “Al-Barzālī’s transmissions are like chiselling in stone.”
People of every persuasion loved and honored him. Several of his children predeceased him. His daughter Fāṭimah copied Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in thirteen volumes; he collated it for her and used to read it before the ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī beneath the Dome, until her copy became an authoritative exemplar from which others transcribed.
He was the shaykh of ḥadīth in the Nūriyya, and there he endowed his books to Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Sayfiyya (6), Dār al-Ḥadīth al-Qūṣiyya, the Congregational Mosque, and other locations, placing them upon the dedicated ḥadīth lecterns. He was humble, beloved, and warmly attentive to people.
He died at the age of seventy-four—may Allah have mercy upon him.