al-Dabbī al-Harawī.
He was born in 294 AH. He began to hear ḥadīth in 309 AH and thereafter, and he caught up with al-Baghawī in the chain (1) but did not actually receive narrations from him. He did, however, hear from Yaḥyā ibn Ṣāʿid, Muʾammal ibn al-Ḥasan al-Māsarjisī, Ḥātim ibn Maḥbūb, Muḥammad ibn Muʿādh al-Mālīnī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim, and several others.
Those who narrated from him include Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥajjājī and al-Dāraquṭnī—both of them his peers—as well as Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Qarrāb, and the scholars of Herat.
He was a distinguished imām, greatly respected, possessed of considerable wealth and lavish in his generosity toward the scholars of ḥadīth and other upright people.
Al-Ḥākim said, “I kept his company both at home and on journeys, and I never saw anyone perform ablution or the prayer more perfectly than he did, nor among our teachers anyone who supplicated and entreated Allah more humbly than he.”
I was told that the tithe of his estate amounted to one thousand camel-loads.
Abū Aḥmad al-Kātib informed me that the register listing the people he maintained exceeded five thousand households. High offices were offered to him, but he declined them.
Abū al-Naḍr al-Fāmī said, “Ibn Abī Dhuhl compiled a work entitled (Ṣaḥīḥ), structuring it after (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī). He also studied jurisprudence in Baghdad, and no leader in Herat ever enjoyed the prestige that gathered around him.”
Al-Khaṭīb said, “He was reliable, eminent, and of lofty rank.”
I heard