The shaykhs he learned from numbered more than two hundred. He auditioned the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal several times, along with the major compilations (1) and many individual fascicles; among the texts he heard was al-Tabarani’s Great Muʿjam (2).
He devoted himself to hadith, reading, copying, and carefully selecting narrations (3). He learned penmanship and arithmetic in the kuttab, memorised the Quran, and applied himself to jurisprudence. He studied Arabic (4) for a few days with Ibn ʿAbd al-Qawī (5), after which he grasped the subject; he then pored over Sībawayh’s Book until he mastered it and excelled in grammar (6). With the same wholehearted dedication he turned to Qur’anic exegesis, outstripping his contemporaries, and he attained a firm command (7) of the principles of jurisprudence and other disciplines besides.
(1) MS K adds the phrase “al-sitta” (the Six).
(2) For a specimen of what he heard and read to his teachers before the age of twenty, see Samaʿat al-Barzali—al-Jami, pp. 216–223. Among the works the shaykh read out in a single session was al-Ghaylaniyyat, which the author mentioned earlier in his Mukhtasar.
(3) Absent from MSS F and K. I note that among the texts he copied is Sunan Abi Dawud, cited by al-Dhahabi in his Dhayl Tarikhihi—al-Jami, p. 268; and among his selections is a set of one hundred high-isnad hadiths from Sahih al-Bukhari, printed repeatedly.
(4) MS K adds: “and he studied Arabic.”
(5) The person intended is Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Qawi ibn Badran ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Maqdisi al-Mardawi, Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbd Allah, the jurist, hadith scholar, and grammarian (d. 699 AH). Ibn Rajab records that Ibn Taymiyya studied with him; see Tarikh al-Islam (deaths of 699, pp. 446–447) and Dhayl Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 4:307–309.
(6) MSS F and K add: “until he became proficient in grammar.”
(7) Omitted in MS F.