Ahmad al-Hisami the grammarian

Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Hisami al-Qahiri al-Shafii, a grammarian, a learned and careful scholar, and a Sufi striver. He was devoted to his mother and looked after her needs. He served himself, bought his own provisions in the market and carried them himself, letting no one carry them for him. He washed with cotton without scrubbing, wore short clothes after the example of the early generations, and kept strictly to ritual purity. He spoke little: one could sit with him for a day or two and not hear a single idle word. He fasted often and stood in prayer during the second half of every night. He refused charity from people and accepted no gifts from anyone ¹.

He took up Sufism from Shaykh Ali al-Marsafi and attended his sessions every Friday. Scholars nonetheless referred to him on rational sciences, and they rated him in Arabic grammar alongside Ibn Malik and Ibn Hisham. He died in Cairo on Tuesday, the fifteenth of Rabi al-Akhir ¹.