years and a few months, after which he was entrusted with the judgeship of Ṭūs. I would enter upon him while the compilations were spread out before him: he would issue a ruling and then turn straight back to his books. In 345 AH he came to Nīshāpūr, attached himself to its mosque and his house, teaching there, devoted to worship and to writing. More than once he was pressed to accept the judgeship or to certify narrators, but each time he excused himself.

He said: “His eyesight failed in 376 AH, and he died while I was away.”

Al-Ḥākim also said: “Abū Aḥmad was one of the righteous, steadfast upon the path of the early generations, and equitable in what we hold concerning the Prophet’s Household and the Companions. He was appointed judge in a number of places.

“He produced writings on the two Ṣaḥīḥs, and on Abū ʿĪsā’s Jāmiʿ. He told me, ‘I heard ʿUmar ibn ʿAllak say: “Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl died and left no one in Khurāsān like Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī in knowledge, asceticism, and scrupulousness. He wept until he went blind.”’

“Abū Aḥmad also authored Kitāb al-ʿIlal, an extraction based on Imām al-Muzanī’s book, a work on legal formularies, and compilations on his teachers and on thematic chapters … until he said: ‘He was the ḥāfiẓ of his age in these regions.’”

Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī said: “I heard Abū Aḥmad the ḥāfiẓ say:

‘I was with the elders in the presence of the ruler of Khurāsān, Nūḥ ibn Naṣr. He asked, “Which of you has memorised the hadith of Abū Bakr on the alms-dues (1)?” None of them had it. I was in shabby clothes, sitting at the back, so I said to his vizier, “I have it by heart.”’”