al-Ḥaḍramī; Abū Bakr ibn Ziyād; Muḥammad ibn Hārūn ibn al-Mujaddar; al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Bisṭām; Naṣr ibn al-Qāsim al-Farāʾiḍī; Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Zughayl; and Muḥammad ibn Zuhayr al-Uballī.
After reaching his thirties he travelled, and in Damascus he heard ḥadith from Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān ibn Zabbān, Abū Isḥāq ibn Abī Thābit, and Abū ʿAlī ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa.
He collected and authored an immense amount; his Tafsīr alone fills a little over twenty volumes, each one provided with full chains of transmission.
Among those who transmitted from him were: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Warrāq—his companion—; Abū Saʿd al-Mālinī; Abū Bakr al-Barqānī; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAtīqī; his son ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar; Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī; al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Khallāl; Abū Ṭālib al-ʿUshārī; Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Muhtadī bi-Allāh; Abū al-Qāsim al-Tanūkhī; and many others.
Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Abī al-Fawāris said, “He is reliable and trustworthy; he produced works that no one else ever composed.”
Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said, “He was reliable and upright, and he lived on the eastern side ⦗1⦘.”
The amīr Abū Naṣr remarked, “He is reliable and trustworthy. He sought out ḥadith in Syria, Iraq, Fārs, and Basra, arranged chapters and biographical entries, and wrote extensively.”
Al-Khaṭīb relates: Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Hāshimī informed us that Ibn Shāhīn told them, “The first thing I wrote was in the year 308 AH. I have compiled three hundred separate works: one of them—al-Tafsīr—runs to 1,000 fascicles; the Musnad to 1,300 fascicles; the History to 150 fascicles; and the Zuḥd to 100 fascicles. The first time I taught in Basra was in the year two …"