ibn ʿUbayd, al-Marzūbānī, the Baghdadi scribe and prolific author.

He narrated from al-Baghawī, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ḥaḍramī, Ibn Durayd, Nifṭawayh, and many others.

From him transmitted al-Tanūkhī, Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī, al-ʿAtīqī, and a number of other scholars.

He was an avid reciter and indefatigable collector who produced Akhbār al-Shuʿarāʾ (Reports on the Poets). Most of his transmissions, however, were by ijāza, yet he would still introduce them with the phrase, “He informed us” (1), much like some of the later scholars of the Maghrib.

Judge al-Ṣaymarī said: I heard him say, “In my house there were fifty quilts and coverlets (2) kept ready for the seekers of knowledge who spent the night with me.”

Al-Azhari remarked: “Al-Marzūbānī would place his inkwell beside a flask of nabīdh (3); he wrote while he drank. He was a Muʿtazilite, compiled a book on the history of the Muʿtazila, and was not deemed reliable.”

Al-Khaṭīb said: “We do not consider him a liar; the main criticisms against him concern his doctrinal persuasion and his practice of masking ijāza transmissions.”

Al-ʿAtīqī said: “He was a Muʿtazilite and reliable. He died in Shawwāl, 384 AH, at the age of eighty-eight.”

Another scholar said: “He was the Jāḥiẓ of his age. ʿAḍud al-Dawla esteemed him so highly that when he passed by his house he would stop and wait until al-Marzūbānī came out to greet him.”