He passed away in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of the year 389 AH, at the age of ninety-six.

Aḥmad ibn Hibat Allāh narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad informed us; Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir informed us; Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad al-Baḥīrī informed us; Zāhir ibn Aḥmad informed us; Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī related to us, saying: Hudbah related to us; Hammām related to us; Qatādah related to us, from Anas:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Allah rejoices more at the repentance of His servant than one of you would when he suddenly finds his camel after having lost it in a trackless desert.” (1) The two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim) also transmitted it from Hudbah ibn Khālid, and we have reached them with a higher chain.

Through this same chain, from Anas, from Muʿādh ibn Jabal, who said: “I was riding behind the Prophet ﷺ, with nothing between him and me but the rear part of the saddle,” and he mentioned the remainder of the ḥadith. The two Shaykhs included it in their Ṣaḥīḥs as well, likewise through Hudbah. (2)

Shaykh al-Islām said: I heard Yaḥyā ibn ʿAmmār say, “I heard Zāhir ibn Aḥmad—who was an imām for the Muslims—say: ‘I looked through the doorway and saw Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī urinating into the drain. I then entered; when the time for prayer arrived he rose and prayed, though he had neither wiped the spot nor performed ablution. When I mentioned wuḍūʾ to him, he replied, “I have not broken my state of purity.”’” I commented: Perhaps he had simply forgotten.

353 – al-Mukhalliṣ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-ʿAbbās
The shaykh, the ḥadith scholar, the long-lived, the trustworthy: Abū Ṭāhir Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān