Izz al-Din, 'Qadi of the Realms'

The judge of the provinces, Izz al-Din ʿAbd al-Aziz al-Baghdadi al-Maqdisi al-Hanbali, a shaykh, imam, scholar and exegete. He was born in Baghdad in 770 AH, studied there, then came to Damascus, where he took jurisprudence from Ibn al-Lahham, read the "Kharaqi" under him, paid attention to preaching and the teaching of hadith, taught and issued legal opinions. His works include an abridgement of "al-Mughni," a commentary on al-Shatibiyya, a work on the sciences of meaning and eloquence, and a collection he called "al-Qamar al-Munir fi Ahadith al-Bashir al-Nadhir." After the Tankiz disturbance he was appointed judge of Jerusalem in 804 AH. He was the first Hanbali to hold the judgeship of Jerusalem, and his tenure was long and had various episodes. He then held the Mu'ayyadiyya in Cairo, then the chief judgeship of Egypt in Jumada II 829 AH, and then the judgeship of Damascus in several terms that together came to eight years. He was called judge of the provinces because he held the judgeship of Baghdad, Iraq, Jerusalem, Egypt and Syria. He was a devout, ascetic jurist, austere in his clothing and his mount, and when he became judge of Egypt he walked to his needs in the markets and rode behind his servant on his mule. All his appointments came without his seeking them.

He died in Damascus on the night of Sunday, the first of Dhu al-Qaʿda 846 AH, and was buried beside the grave of his father in the cemetery of Bab Kaysan ¹.