253 – Al-Ghiṭrīfī, Abū Aḥmad Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ, meticulous scholar, indefatigable traveler, and leading musnid of his day: Abū Aḥmad Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥusayn ibn al-Qāsim ibn al-Sarī ibn al-Ghiṭrīf ibn al-Jahm al-ʿAbdī, known as al-Ghiṭrīfī al-Jurjānī, al-Ribāṭī, al-Ghāzī.
He was born in the 280-something AH.
His father, a man from Nishapur, took up residence in the ribāṭ of Dehistan and became head of the garrison there; it was there that Abū Aḥmad was born. He later grew up in Jurjān and settled there permanently.
He studied under Abū Khalīfah al-Jumaḥī—narrating extensively from him—al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, ʿImrān ibn Mūsā ibn Mujāshiʿ, Ibrāhīm ibn Yūsuf al-Hisinjānī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nājah, al-Haytham ibn Khalaf, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī, Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn Surayj, the leading Shāfiʿī jurist, Abū Bakr Ibn Khuzaymah, ʿAbdūs ibn Aḥmad al-Hamadhānī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Bāghandī, ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Kāghadī, and their peers in Jurjān, Rayy, Basra, Nishapur, Baghdad, Hamadhān, and elsewhere.
Those who transmitted from him include his companion, Imām Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, who cites more than one hundred hadith from him in his works. At times he refers to him as “Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-ʿAbdī,” at others “Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥāmid al-Thaghrī,” or simply “the Nishapuri,” or again “al-ʿAbqasi,” employing such aliases as a form of tadlīs because the shaykh was still living in the same town.