At the very first session they had assembled every faction—Sunnis, innovators, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and materialists. Each faction had a spokesman who would present and champion his doctrine, and whenever a spokesman arrived everyone stood for him. Then an announcer would say, “Debate one another, but let no one argue by means of his scripture or his prophet, for we neither believe in nor acknowledge any of that. Instead, bring forward pure reason and logical analogy.”

When I heard this, I never went back. Later someone said to me, “There is another session of speculative theology here.” I went, only to find them behaving exactly like the first group. Ibn Abī Zayd was astonished and exclaimed, “The scholars have vanished, and the sanctity of the religion has disappeared.”

I say: We praise Allah for safety, for in the fourth century Islam was subjected to severe trials—the ʿUbaydid regime in the West, the Buyid regime in the East, and the Bedouin Qarmaṭah. All matters belong to Allah, the Exalted.

176 – Ibn Māsi, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ayyūb al-Baghdādī
The shaykh, the hadith scholar, trustworthy and precise, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ayyūb ibn Māsi al-Baghdādī, the cloth-dealer.

He heard hadith from: Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, Abū Shuʿayb al-Ḥarrānī, Aḥmad ibn Abī ʿAwf al-Buzūrī, Khalaf ibn ʿAmr al-ʿUkbarī, Mūsā ibn Isḥāq al-Anṣārī, Abū Barzah al-Faḍl ibn Muḥammad the accountant, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Shuʿayb al-Simsār, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAllawayh al-Qaṭṭān, Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥannāʾī, Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿĀṣim al-Dimashqī, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Khazzāz—and he said, “I heard from him in 286 AH”—and Yūsuf