Shihab al-Din ibn 'Abd al-Haqq al-Sunbati

Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Haqq ibn Muhammad al-Sunbati al-Misri al-Shafii, preacher at the al-Azhar mosque. He studied with his father and others. He was with his father in Mecca during a stay there in the year 931, and he preached in the Sacred Mosque while his father was still alive. His preaching was received with great success at that time. He was the one who led the funeral prayer over his father when he died in Mecca ².

Al-Sha'rani said: "We have not seen any preacher whom crowds turned to as they turned to him. When he came down from the pulpit people fought over him." He was learned in many branches of the religious sciences and had a long experience of the disagreements between the schools of the jurists. He was among the leading figures of the People of the Sunna and the Community, and his fame spread across the lands, to al-Sham, the Hijaz, Yemen and Anatolia, so that people used him as a standard of comparison. The scholars of Egypt, both the elite and the common people, deferred to him. He was appointed to teach at the Khashshabiyya madrasa in Egypt after al-Dayrutiyy. Its endowment was reserved for the highest scholars of the Shafiis, as al-Shamiyya al-Barraniyya in Damascus was. He used to say that coffee made from the coffee bean was forbidden, but a consensus has now been formed that it is lawful in itself ³.

He died at the end of Safar. Al-Sha'rani said: "When he died, Egypt was plunged into darkness at his death, and a great pillar of the religion had fallen. In my whole life I have not seen a funeral with more people, except the funeral of Shihab al-Ramli. The Sufis at his funeral had a strange effect: my back was sore for a long time from the crush." ³