Taqi al-Din al-Balatinsi

Taqi al-Din Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Balatinsi al-Shafii, the hadith master and shaykh of shaykhs of Islam. He was born on Friday, the tenth of Rajab in the year 851. He studied with his father, with al-Zayn Khattab, al-Badr ibn Qadi Shuhba, and the two shaykhs of Islam al-Najmi and al-Taqwa, sons of the judge of Ajlun, and others ².

According to his student, he came from a house of piety and learning. He came to Damascus in search of knowledge and settled there, and he took nothing from its endowments. Money and posts were sent to him, but he refused them. He was a learned man who acted on his knowledge, and devout. He was held in awe by jurists and judges, and people came to him for the solution of difficult questions. Because he was wealthy he did not visit anyone. He commanded what is right and forbade what is wrong, and no one's blame deterred him when it came to God. He recited the whole Qur'an every Friday, and in the month of Ramadan he completed two recitations every night. He wrote an ode in the rhyme of nun in praise of Sultan Suleiman, in which he mentioned the conquests of his reign, such as Rhodes and Chaldiran. He died on the night of Monday, the second of Muharram, and was buried at Bab al-Saghir beside his grandfather, the shaykh of Islam Shams al-Din al-Balatinsi ¹.