- Al-Ḥajjājī Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb
The imām, ḥāfiẓ, critic, master Qur’an reciter, and Shaykh of Khurāsān: Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-Ḥajjāj al-Ḥajjājī al-Naysābūrī, the foremost of the reciters and ḥadith scholars.
He was born in 285 AH.
In Baghdad he heard ḥadith from ʿUmar ibn Abī Ghaylān, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, al-Bāghandī, al-Baghawī, and their peers; in Nīshāpūr from Abū Bakr ibn Khuzaymah, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Thaqafī, and their contemporaries; in Rayy from Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar and his circle; in Egypt from ʿAllān ibn al-Ṣayqal and others like him; in Syria from Abū al-Jahm ibn Ṭalab, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Jawṣā, and Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Harawī; in the Jazīrah from Abū ʿArūbah al-Ḥarrānī; and in Kūfah from ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Muqānaʿī together with the scholars who were present there.
He gathered material, authored works, authenticated and critiqued narrations, and his fame spread far and wide.
Among those who transmitted from him were: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥāfiẓ and Abū Bakr ibn al-Muqriʾ—both slightly older than he—Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mandah, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, Abū Ḥāzim al-ʿAbdawī, Abū Bakr al-Barqānī, and a number of others.
Al-Ḥākim said: “He is Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥajjājī. In my History of the People of Nīshāpūr I have recorded the merits of their ancestor Ismāʿīl ibn al-Ḥajjāj, who was one of the companions of Isḥāq al-Ḥanẓalī; and I have likewise recorded the virtues of Yaʿqūb ibn Ismāʿīl, who was a companion of Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī. Their forefather’s name was al-Ḥajjāj ibn al-Jarrāḥ.”