Ibrāhīm leave a son?’—meaning his brother, the ḥāfiẓ.

He replied, ‘And how do you know him?’ I kept silent. Then he said to Abū Naṣr, ‘Who is this middle-aged man?’ He answered, ‘It is so-and-so.’ At that, the shaykh rose toward me and I rose toward him. He spoke of the longing he felt, I voiced the same, and our exchange of memories refreshed us both. I sat with him many times, and when I bade him farewell on the day I departed, he said, ‘The next pilgrimage season will bring us together, for I am bound to stay near the Sanctuary.’ He subsequently performed Ḥajj in 368 AH, remained there in devotion until he died, and he strove never to appear in public—whether for hadith or anything else. His brother Ibrāhīm was counted among the great ḥuffāẓ.

Al-Muʾammal ibn Muḥammad told us; Abū al-Yaman al-Kindī told us; al-Shaybānī told us; al-Khaṭīb told us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī the Qurʾān-reciter told me; Abū Muslim ibn Mihrān informed us; ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn Khalaf narrated to us; I heard Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad say—I heard Abū Zurʿah state:

‘I wrote down two hundred thousand hadiths from two men: Ibrāhīm al-Farrāʾ and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Shaybah.’

Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī and others said: He died in Mecca in 375 AH.

I add: In that same year passed away the hadith scholar of Nishapur, Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Baḥīrī; in Baghdad, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd al-ʿAskarī; the Shāfiʿī master Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dārakī; the hadith scholar of Baghdad, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Zayyāt; the Mālikī shaykh, the judge Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Abharī; the hadith scholar of Syria, Abū Bakr Yūsuf ibn al-Qāsim al-Mayānajī; the preacher and author of “Alerting the Heedless,” Abū al-Layth Naṣr ibn Muḥammad al-Samarkandī the Ḥanafī; and the musnid ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Jaʿfar al-Khiraqī of Baghdad.