—Allah.”

Ibn Batta is the only transmitter who relates this report as marfūʿ, and he alone includes the wording that comes after the phrase ghayr dhakiyy (1).

Likewise, Ibn Batta slipped in several reports that he traced back to Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar al-Ardabīlī, introducing them with: “Rajaʾ ibn Murajja informed us….” Al-Dāraqutnī rejected this and said, “Ḥafṣ is too junior for that.” They therefore wrote to Ardabīl and asked one of Ḥafṣ’s sons; the reply came back that his father had never set eyes on Rajaʾ at all (2). Ibn Batta then combed through the copies and altered the chain so that it read: from Ibn al-Rajayān, from al-Fath ibn Shakhraf, from Rajaʾ.

I say: Even one case like this is enough to weaken the shaykh.

His death has already been recorded under the year 387 AH.

In that same year there also died: the exemplar Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Qumisānī al-Nahāwandī—who kept company with al-Shiblī; Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Thallāj; ʿUbayd Allah ibn Abī Ghālib al-Miṣrī; ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Mardak; the ruler of Ray, Fakhr al-Dawla ʿAlī ibn Rukn al-Dawla ibn Būwayh; the Hanbalī shaykh Abū Ḥafṣ al-ʿUqbari; Abū Dharr ʿAmmār ibn Muḥammad al-Tamīmī, in Bukhārā; Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn Samʿūn; the grandson of Abū Bakr ibn Khuzayma; and others besides.

390 – al-Rummānī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā al-Naḥwī*

The erudite scholar, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā al-Rummānī, the Muʿtazilī grammarian.