Nasir al-Din al-Tablawi

Nasir al-Din Muhammad ibn Salim al-Tablawi al-Shafi'i, the scholar and one of the unique scholars of Egypt. The scholar Muhammad al-Bilguni gave him a written licence at the beginning of Jumada al-Ula 992 AH. In it he said that he received knowledge from distinguished shaykhs, among them the chief judge Zakariyya, the master of his age al-Fakhr ibn Uthman al-Dimi, al-Suyuti and al-Burhan al-Qalqashandi, and that he also received the high licence orally from Shihab al-Din al-Bijuwi, commentator on Jami' al-Mukhtasarat, resident of the guarded frontier of Damietta, from the shaykh of the readers and hadith masters, Muhammad ibn al-Jazari. ².

Al-Sha'rani said: "I kept his company for about fifty years, and I did not see anyone among his peers who was more devoted to the worship of God than him." He was well known in Egypt for frequently seeing the Messenger of God in dreams, so that people flocked to him in great numbers for this reason. Some of the saints advised him to conceal this, and he concealed it. ¹.

No one in Egypt at present taught all the religious sciences and their instruments from memory, and this was counted among his leadership. He was one of those who were deeply learned in tafsir, the readings, jurisprudence, grammar, hadith, the foundations, meanings, rhetoric, arithmetic, logic, theology and Sufism. He wrote two commentaries on al-Bahja, and he held the teaching post at al-Khashabiyya, which was among the finest teaching posts in Egypt. The people bore witness that he was more learned than all his peers, the most humble of them, and the best of character. He died in Egypt on the tenth of Jumada al-Akhira and was buried in the courtyard of Imam al-Shafi'i, aged about one hundred years. ³.