Another Rarity

On the twentieth of the month of Shaʿbān, Tuesday, the shaykh of the Shāfiʿīs, Shaykh Allāma Kenyā al-Dīn b. Sharīshī, was invited to his garden. Present among them were a leading group of scholars including the deputy of Bayt al-Māl, Shaykh Imam Allāma Ṣalāḥaddīn al-Ṣifdī; Shaykh Imam Allāma Shams al-Dīn al-Mūsilī al-Shāfiʿī; from the descendants of Shaykh Abū Isḥāq al-Fīrūzābādī and lexicographers, Shaykh Imam Allāma Majd al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Shīrāzī; among the virtuous and eloquent scholars, the orator Imam Allāma Ṣadr al-Dīn b. ʿIzz al-Ḥanafī; and the eloquent qurrāʾ and muhaddith Shaykh Imam al-Kūfī Nūr al-Dīn ʿĀlī b. al-Ṣārimīn. They brought there the work Kitāb al-Muntahā, consisting of over forty volumes, which is among the waqf (endowed) works of Tamīmī al-Basramī in Nāṣiriyya. Present at the gathering was also Allāma Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad, son of Shaykh Kemāl al-Dīn b. Sharīshī. We all gathered around. Each of us took a volume of that work of over forty volumes in our hands. Then we began to ask Allāma Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad about the poems cited as evidence for istišhād (testimonial proof) in this work. He began to speak, giving useful and explanatory information about each of these poems. The listeners and those present there became firmly convinced that he had memorized all the lexical evidences and witnesses, except for a very few rare (shāz) witnesses and evidences which he had not memorized. This is one of the most astonishing rarities and the most remarkable examples concerning ʿirāb (grammatical inflection).