ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Aḥmad ibn Suhayl; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Anmāṭī; Yamūt ibn al-Muzarraʿ; and a host of others.
He began collecting ḥadith while still a youth, lived to a great age, possessed exceptionally elevated chains of transmission, and was endowed with keen understanding and broad learning.
Those who narrated from him include: al-Dāraqutnī; ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Saʿīd; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Naḥḥās; Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAmr al-Ḥaddād; Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī al-Ṭaḥḥān; Muḥammad ibn al-Mughallas al-Dāʾūdī; Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī al-Dhikr; ʿAlī ibn Rabīʿah al-Tamīmī; Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Fārisī; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ṭaffāl; and many scholars from the Maghrib.
He was regarded as the foremost traditionist of Egypt in his day.
Yaḥyā ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān said, “He narrated from so many teachers that I could not possibly enumerate them; I have never seen a scholar with more ḥadith than he.”
He told me, “I was born in Ṣafar of the year 283 AH.”
He died in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of the year 370 AH.
198 – The Father of Abū Nuʿaym, ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad al-Iṣbahānī *
The ḥāfiẓ and imam, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Iṣbahānī—grandson of Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Bannā the ascetic, whose allegiance was to the household of ʿAbd Allah ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib.
He transmitted from: Abū Khalīfah, Ibn Nājah, ʿAbdān al-Ahwāzī, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Mandah, and their contemporaries.
Those who narrated from him include his son Abū Nuʿaym and Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿAlī al-Dhakwānī.
He died in 365 AH at the age of eighty-four.