389 – Ibn Batta, ʿUbayd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-ʿUkbarī
The imām, exemplar, devotee, jurist, ḥadīth scholar, and Shaykh of Iraq: Abū ʿAbd Allah ʿUbayd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ḥamdān al-ʿUkbarī al-Ḥanbalī, universally known as Ibn Batta, author of the three-volume work al-Ibāna al-Kubrā.
He related ḥadīth from Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Ibn Ṣāʿid, Abū Dharr ibn al-Bāghandī, Abū Bakr ibn Ziyād al-Naysābūrī, Ismāʿīl al-Warrāq, the judge al-Maḥāmilī, Muḥammad ibn Makhlad, the ḥāfiẓ Abū Ṭālib Aḥmad ibn Naṣr, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Thābit al-ʿUkbarī, and others. In middle age he travelled and heard ḥadīth from ʿAlī ibn Abī al-ʿAqab in Damascus, from Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd al-Ṣaffār in Ḥimṣ, and from a number of other scholars.
Among those who narrated from him were Abū al-Fath ibn Abī al-Fawāris, Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣbahānī, ʿUbayd Allah al-Azharī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Azajī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAtīqī, Abū Isḥāq al-Barmakī, Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī, Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā al-Saʿdī, and others; the last to receive his formal permission was ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Busrī.
ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAlī al-ʿUkbarī said, “I have never seen, whether among the ḥadīth shaykhs or anyone else, a man of finer appearance than Ibn Batta—may Allah have mercy on him.” (1)
Al-Khaṭīb reports: Abū Ḥāmid al-Dalawī told me, “When Ibn Batta returned from…"