الملك المعظم عيسى بن العادل صاحب دمشق

الملك المعظم عيسى بن العادل صاحب دمشق

Son of al-Malik al-Adil Abu Bakr ibn Ayyub, lord of Damascus from his father's death in 615 until his own death. He was learned in several sciences and excelled in them: jurisprudence in the school of Abu Hanifa, to the point of being among its distinguished scholars, and grammar and lexicography. He ordered a comprehensive dictionary compiled for him, combining al-Jawhari's Sihah with what it lacked from al-Azhari's Tahdhib and Ibn Durayd's Jamhara. He ordered Ahmad ibn Hanbal's Musnad arranged by chapters, so that each hadith returned to its chapter. Learning flourished in his time, scholars came to him from distant regions, and he honoured them, paid them stipends, sat with them, and bore patiently with what he disliked to hear. His creed was sound; he said that his creed in the fundamentals was what Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi had written. He directed that he be shrouded in white cloth without gold and buried in a lahd with no structure over it, under the open sky. In his illness he said that, concerning Damietta, he had with God what he hoped would win him mercy. He died on Friday, the last day of Dhu'l-Qa'da 624, of dysentery, after ten years and five months in power, and was succeeded by his son al-Nasir Dawud ¹. Shadharat al-Dhahab says he was born in Cairo in 576, memorised the Qur'an, excelled in jurisprudence, wrote a commentary on the Jami' al-Kabir in several volumes with help from others, heard the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, and wrote much poetry; he was indifferent to the protocol and pomp of kings and often rode alone. Ibn al-Ahdal said he was a Hanafi, intensely partisan for his school and the only Hanafi among the Ayyubids, and that his children followed him in this. He had set a reward of a hundred dinars and a robe for anyone who memorised al-Zamakhshari's Mufassal, and a group memorised it for that reason. When Ibn Unayn fell ill, he wrote to him and sent him a purse of three hundred dinars, saying, 'This is the gift, and I am the visitor.' He died on the last day of Dhu'l-Qa'da; Ibn Khallikan said he died on Friday, the first of Dhu'l-Hijja, in Damascus, and was buried in its citadel, then moved to al-Salihiyya and buried in his madrasa there, where the graves of several of his brothers and kinsmen are known as the Mu'azzamiyya ².