al-Barqānī said, “I copied a great deal from him, but later it became clear to me that he is not an authoritative source.”

Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Dhuhl remarked, “He is weak.”

When al-Ḥākim was asked about him, he replied, “He is a liar; one should not busy oneself with him. He arrived here in 359 AH and we wrote down all sorts of oddities from him. Later I met Ibn Abī Dhuhl, who spoke of him in the coarsest terms and told me, ‘We entered Baghdad together after al-Baghawī had already died, yet here he is reporting from al-Baghawī without any shame in my presence.’”

Al-Ḥākim then added, “It is possible that he really did hear from al-Baghawī, and that Ibn Abī Dhuhl simply did not know, for he himself said, ‘We arrived when al-Baghawī was in the final stage of his illness.’”

He died in 372 AH.

258 – al-Mayanajī, Abū Bakr Yūsuf ibn al-Qāsim ibn Yūsuf

The judge, imam, ḥāfiẓ, and eminent hadith scholar: Abū Bakr Yūsuf ibn al-Qāsim ibn Yūsuf ibn Fāris ibn Sawwār al-Mayanajī al-Shāfiʿī, deputy judge in Damascus on behalf of the Fatimid state’s chief qadi, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, son of the jurist Abū Ḥanīfah al-Nuʿmān al-Maghribī.

Al-Mayanajī was the leading musnid of the Levant in his time.

He heard hadith from Abā Khalīfah al-Jumaḥī, Zakariyyā al-Sājī, ʿAbdān al-Ahwāzī, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Tustarī, and Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī,