Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi, shaykh al-Islam of Damascus

Badr al-Din Abu al-Barakat Muhammad, son of the judge Radi al-Din al-Ghazzi al-Amiri al-Qurashi al-Shafi'i, Shaykh al-Islam of Damascus and sea of knowledge. He was born at the time of the night prayer on the night of Monday, 14 Dhu al-Qa'da 904 AH. His father took him to Shaykh Abu al-Fath al-Mizzi, who clothed him with the Sufi patched cloak, taught him the remembrance, and gave him licence in everything permitted to be transmitted, when he was under two years old. He recited the Qur'an in the ten readings to Badr al-Din al-Sanhuri, kept company with his father in jurisprudence, grammar and logic, and read with Taqi al-Din ibn Qadi Ajlun and others. Then he travelled to Cairo, where he took from the judge Zakariyya, al-Burhan ibn Abi Sharif, al-Qalqashandi and al-Qastallani for about five years, and began teaching at the age of seventeen. ².

He held the leadership of the readers at the Umayyad Mosque and the imamate of the maqsura. He taught at al-Adiliyya, al-Shamiyya al-Barraniyya, al-Muqaddamiyya and al-Taqawiyya, and was given both al-Taqawiyya and the inner al-Shamiyya together. He kept to seclusion, did not go to judges or rulers, but they came to him and asked permission to visit him. He took nothing for issuing legal opinions and closed the door to gifts entirely. ³.

His works numbered one hundred and fifteen. Among the best known are his three commentaries: the prose commentary and the two versified commentaries, the most famous of which is the great versified commentary of one hundred thousand verses, or eighty thousand. He died on Wednesday, the sixteenth of Shawwal, and was buried in the tomb of Shaykh Arsalan at the foot of Qasiyun. ⁴.