Along with his vast learning and prodigious memory he was a constant faster and habitual night-prayer devotee. He compiled al-Ṣaḥīḥ ʿalā al-Masānīd (a “Sound Collection Arranged by Musnads”) and lived to an advanced age.
Those who narrated from him include the hadith master (ḥāfiẓ) Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥamzah al-Sahmī, Raḍiyy ibn Isḥāq al-Naṣrī, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Sarī ibn Ismāʿīl—son of the Imām al-Ismāʿīlī— the judge Abū Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī, and others.
The last person to transmit his reports with a loftily-short chain was al-Fakhr ibn al-Bukhārī.
He died in Rajab 377 AH.
In that same year there also passed away: the grammarian Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn Isḥāq ibn al-Bahlūl al-Tanūkhī—he had heard ʿUmar ibn Abī Ghaylān; Abū al-ʿAbbās Abyad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abyad ibn Aswad al-Fihri of Egypt, the last of al-Nasāʾī’s disciples; the Iraqi jurist Amat al-Waḥid, daughter of the judge al-Mahamili; the leading grammarian of Baghdad, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Fārisi; Baghdad’s hadith scholar Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Luʾluʾ al-Warrāq—he had met Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad al-Kātib; the erudite polymath Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Anṭākī, the Qur’an reciter who settled in al-Andalus; the reciter Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Malatī; the musnid Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Zayd ibn Marwān (1) of Kūfa; and the musnid of Bukhārā, Abū ʿAmr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣābir ibn Kātib, the muezzin.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad informed us by authorization; ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad informed us; Ibn Mullūk and the judge Abū Bakr narrated to us, saying:
“Tāhir ibn ʿAbd Allāh informed us; Abū Aḥmad al-Ghiṭrīfī informed us; Abū Khalīfah narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Kathīr narrated to us; Shuʿbah narrated to us, from…”