Saʿid ibn Ḥātim narrated to us; Ismāʿīl ibn Mukhlad narrated to us; ʿUbayd ibn Yaʿīsh narrated to me; Manṣūr ibn Wardān, from Abū Ḥamzah al-Thumālī, from ʿIkrimah, from Ibn ʿAbbās, who said:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ delivered a sermon to us in the Mosque of al-Khayf and said, “May Allah brighten the face of the person who hears from us a ḥadīth…,” and he related the remainder of the report. (1)

125 – Ibn al-Najm, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad ibn Ṭāhir al-Mayanajī *

The imam, the ḥāfiẓ, the meticulous scholar: Abū ʿAbd Allāh Aḥmad ibn Ṭāhir ibn al-Najm al-Mayanajī.

A tireless, wide-roaming traveller.

He heard ḥadīth from Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥannāʾī, Aḥmad ibn Hārūn al-Bardījī and their peers, and he perfected his craft under Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr al-Bardaʿī, the companion of Abū Zurʿah.

Those who transmitted from him include: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Zurʿah al-Qazwīnī, Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf al-Ardabīlī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Tarāsī, Aḥmad ibn Fāris the philologist, and others.

Ibn Fāris used to say, “Ibn al-Najm never saw anyone comparable to himself, and I have never seen anyone like him.”