Shams al-Din Ibn al-Jazari

The hafiz Shams al-Din Ibn al-Jazari, reciter of the Islamic lands. He was born in Damascus on the night of Saturday, the twenty-fifth of Ramadan 751 AH, and studied jurisprudence there. He travelled in search of hadith and the readings of the Qur'an, and excelled in both. He established a college for readers which he called "Dar al-Qur'an." He had worked for Itmish, the steward of Tulbak, who grew angry with him over something and threatened him, so he fled from him and crossed by sea to the lands of Rum in 798 AH. He joined Bayezid ibn ʿUthman, who honoured him, and the people of the region took the science of the readings from him in large numbers. He was among those present at the battle with Ibn ʿUthman and at al-Tankiyya. When Ibn ʿUthman was taken captive, Timur Lang came to him, honoured him, and appointed him judge of Shiraz, where he served for a long time. He was very generous to the people of the Hijaz, and the people of that region took the readings and hadith from him. The leadership of the science of readings in the lands ended with him. He had long before written "al-Hisn al-Hasin" on supplications, and the people of Yemen became devoted to it and acquired many copies before he came to them. He wrote a supplement to al-Dhahabi's "Tabaqat al-Qurra" and did it well, composed a poem on the readings of the three, and compiled "al-Nashr fi al-Qiraʾat al-ʿAshr." Ibn Hajar said that he was without peer, famous, and that people benefited from his books, which spread across the horizons like the sun.

He died in Shiraz in Rabiʿ I 833 AH and was buried in the college he had built there ¹.