and of the ḥadith scholars, Abū ʿAlī al-Sarakhsī.
He was born in 294 AH.
He received hadith from Abū Labīd Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Sāmī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Yaḥyā ibn Ṣāʿid, Muḥammad ibn al-Musayyab al-Arghiyānī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥafṣ al-Juwaynī, Muʾammal ibn al-Ḥasan al-Māsarjisī, Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn Zuhayr al-Ublī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allah al-ʿAskarī al-Zabībī, ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Mubashshir al-Wāsiṭī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Ḥaḍramī, Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān al-Mālikī al-Baṣrī, and many others.
Those who narrated from him include al-Ḥākim, Abū ʿUthmān Ismāʿīl ibn al-Ṣābūnī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Muzakkī, Abū ʿUthmān Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad al-Baḥīrī, the judge Abū al-Muẓaffar Manṣūr ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Qurrah al-Ḥanafī, Karīma al-Marwaziyya—the devotee who had taken residence near the Sacred Mosque—and many others besides them.
He owned a copy of the Muwaṭṭaʾ that lacked the chapters on musāqāh (share-cropping) and qirāḍ (silent partnership); it had belonged to the Emir Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-Hāshimī, a disciple of Abū Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī. He also acquired the disciplines of dialectical debate and kalām from Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī.
Al-Ḥākim said: “He is Abū ʿAlī al-Sarakhsī al-Shāfiʿī, the leading scholar of his age in Khurasan. I heard one of his debates in the assembly of Abū Bakr ibn Isḥāq al-Ṣibghī. He had recited to Abū Bakr ibn Mujāhid, studied jurisprudence with Abū Isḥāq al-Marwazī, and pursued literary studies with Abū Bakr ibn al-Anbārī. His writings used to reach me continually.”