and al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Khallāl, Abū Ṭālib al-ʿUshārī, Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Abanūsī, Khadījah bint Muḥammad al-Shāhjāniyyah, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdūh al-Ḥanbalī, and a number of others.

His great-grandfather—pronounced with a quiescent n—was ʿAnbas ibn Ismāʿīl al-Qazzāz. He transmitted from Shuʿayb ibn Ḥarb, and Muḥammad ibn Makhlad managed to meet him.

Al-Sulamī said, “He is one of the shaykhs of Baghdad. In these disciplines his tongue soars high; he does not attach himself to any particular teacher. He is the spokesman of the age, the authority to whom people refer for the etiquette of dealings, and he draws upon many branches of knowledge.”

Al-Khaṭīb remarked, “He was the unrivalled man of his time, unique in his age for his discourse on the science of inner thoughts (ʿilm al-khawāṭir).”

People recorded his aphorisms and gathered his sayings. Some of our shaykhs, whenever they narrated from him, would preface it with, “The noble shaykh whose speech is imbued with wisdom (1) has related to us.”

Ibn ʿAllān informed us, through al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī; Nasr Allāh ibn Muḥammad the jurist informed us; Abū al-Fath Naṣr ibn Ibrāhīm informed us; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Zaʿfarānī informed us; Abū Muḥammad al-Sunnī, a companion of Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn Samʿūn, narrated to me:

“At the beginning of his career Ibn Samʿūn used to copy books for wages and would provide for himself and his mother. One day he said to her, ‘I would like to perform the pilgrimage.’ She replied, ‘How could you manage that?’ Sleep then overcame her; after an hour she awoke and said, ‘My son, go on Hajj. I saw the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—in a dream saying: “Let him go on pilgrimage, for good awaits him in it.”’ Delighted, he sold his notebooks, gave her part of the proceeds, and set out with the caravan. Bedouins, however, waylaid the group.

“I was left without clothes,” he said. “Whenever hunger overpowered me and I saw some of the pilgrims eating…"