al-Baṣrī, along with scholars of their generation in Nishapur. He undertook his first journey there when he was nineteen years old, and in that city he auditioned roughly 500,000 hadiths.

In Bukhara he heard from al-Haytham ibn Kulayb al-Shāshī and a number of others; in Baghdad he received hadith from Ismāʿīl al-Ṣaffār, Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Bakhtarī al-Razzāz and their peers; in Egypt from Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad ibn ʿAmr al-Madīnī, al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf al-Ṭarāʾifī, Aḥmad ibn Buhzād al-Fārisī and their colleagues; in Sarakhs from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥanbal; in Merv from Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Maḥbūb and those of his rank; and in Damascus from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Sinān al-Qanṭarī, Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Hishām, Ibn Abī al-ʿUqb, and many others.

In Tripoli he studied with Khaythamah ibn Sulaymān al-Qurashī; in Homs with al-Ḥasan ibn Manṣūr al-Imām; in Tinnīs with ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Samarkandī; in Gaza with ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Ghazzī; and he heard from countless other scholars in many additional cities.

I know of no one whose travels for knowledge were broader than his, nor anyone who collected more hadiths while still retaining them with accuracy and reliability. We have been informed that his teachers numbered 1,700.

He also transmits by ijāzah (formal licence) from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim, Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUqda, al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥaṣīb, and a group who granted him authorisation through the efforts of his father and other family members. His lifespan was not exceptionally long; he lived eighty-four years.

Among the leading ḥuffāẓ (hadith masters) from whom he learned were Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAṣṣāl, Abū Ḥātim ibn Ḥibbān, Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī, Abū Isḥāq ibn Ḥamzah, al-Ṭabarānī, and others of comparable standing.

Those who narrated from him include the ḥāfiẓ Abū Shaykh—who had himself been one of his teachers—Abū Bakr ibn al-Muqriʾ, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ghunjar, Abū Saʿd al-Idrīsī, Tammām ibn Muḥammad al-Rāzī, Ḥamzah ibn Yūsuf al-Sahmī, Abū Nuʿaym al-Aṣbahānī, Aḥmad ibn al-Faḍl al-Bāṭirqānī, Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd al-Thaqafī, and Abū al-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān