Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Abī al-Fawāris, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Wāsiṭī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb, Abū Dharr al-Harawī, Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīlī, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, Abū Ṣāliḥ the muezzin, al-Zakī ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Baḥīrī, Muʾammal ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ṣarrām, ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Maḥmī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Khalaf al-Shīrāzī, and many others besides them.

He authored and extracted collections, declared transmitters reliable or otherwise, authenticated and critiqued reports; in knowledge he was an ocean, though he did show a slight Shiʿi leaning.

He studied the variant Qurʾānic readings with Ibn al-Imām (1), Muḥammad ibn Abī Manṣūr al-Ṣarrām, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Naqqār—the leading reciter of Kufa—and Abū ʿĪsā Bakkār, the reciter of Baghdad.

In jurisprudence he trained under Abū ʿAlī ibn Abī Hurayrah, Abū al-Walīd Ḥassān ibn Muḥammad, and Abū Sahl al-Ṣuʿlūkī.

He acquired the various disciplines of hadith from Abū ʿAlī the ḥāfiẓ (2), al-Jiʿābī, Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim (3), al-Dāraquṭnī, and several others.

Among his own teachers who ultimately narrated from him were Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī and Aḥmad ibn Abī ʿUthmān al-Ḥīrī. I came across something remarkable: the hadith master of al-Andalus, Abū ʿUmar—