He dictated a number of public hadith sessions. Those who transmitted from him include Abū al-Qāsim al-Azharī, Abū Muḥammad al-Khallāl, ʿAlī ibn al-Muḥassin al-Tanūkhī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Shītā, Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima, Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Naqqūr, and others.

Al-Khaṭīb said, “His auditions were reliable and his manuscripts sound.”

Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Abī al-Fawāris remarked, “He was charged with a trace of the philosophers’ doctrine; he died on Friday, the first of Rabīʿ al-Awwal in 391 AH (1).”

Others maintained that he died in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, while another report states that his death occurred in Muḥarram.

He also composed graceful verse. Al-Khaṭīb relates: “Abū Yaʿlā ibn al-Farrāʾ recited to me—having himself heard it from ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī—the following lines:

Many a dead man lives on through knowledge,
while one still breathing has amassed only ignorance and error.
So seek knowledge that you may attain immortality;
never count a life in ignorance as anything (2).”

Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Nadīm said, “ʿĪsā was peerless in his time in the science of logic and the ancient disciplines; he also authored a work on the Persian language (3).”

I say: These sciences marred him rather than adorned him, yet perhaps he was shown mercy because of his devotion to hadith, if Allah wills.