He transmitted ḥadith from: Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Muḥammad ibn al-Fayḍ al-Ghassānī, Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Jumāhir ibn Muḥammad al-Zamlakānī, Muḥammad ibn Khuraym, Muḥammad ibn al-Rabīʿ al-Jīzī, and Ibn Abī Dāwūd.
Those who narrated from him included Tammām al-Rāzī, ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Saʿīd, Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf, Abū Naṣr ibn al-Jabbān, Muḥammad and Aḥmad—the two sons of al-ʿAfīf ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Naṣr—and others.
Abū Sulaymān said: “Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī examined many of my writings; they remained with him overnight and he read through them. They impressed him, and he said to me, ‘Abū Sulaymān, you are the pharmacists, and we are the physicians.’”
Al-Kattānī said: A number of people related to us from him, and he used to dictate in the Great Mosque.
He added: “He was trustworthy, reliable, and distinguished, and he died in Jumādā al-Ūlā of the year 379 AH.”
I say: He authored a well-known chronicle of deaths entitled al-Wafayāt, arranged year by year. Abū Naṣr ibn al-Jabbān reported that he saw the Truth—Allah—in a dream, and that he beheld a light.
In that same year there also died: Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Bālūwayh; King Sharaf al-Dawla Shirawayh, son of ʿAḍud al-Dawla; Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Jawharī, the theologian and engraver of coins; the grammarian Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī in Córdoba; Muḥammad ibn al-Naḍr al-Nakhkhās al-Mawṣilī; Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar, the ḥāfiẓ; and Hilāl ibn Muḥammad al-Baṣrī, associate of al-Kajjī.