—the Isfarayini, a hadith specialist and tireless traveler.
He began his journeys in 354 AH and met the leading authorities, such as Abū Aḥmad ibn ʿAdī and his contemporaries.
Abū Masʿūd al-Bajalī relates: “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ḥākim say, ‘I testify that Abū Bakr al-Isfarayini has memorised, from the narrations of Mālik, Shuʿbah, Misʿar and al-Thawrī, more than twenty thousand hadiths (1).’”
I remark: We have not received a detailed account of this ḥāfiẓ’s life.
He died in 406 AH.
In that same year passed away the mufti of Iraq, Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarayini (2); the Shaykh of the Sufis, the master Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq (3); the chief of physicians, Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Muhallabī (4) in Nishapur; the hadith authority of the Sacred Precinct, ʿUbayd Allah ibn Muḥammad al-Saqaṭī (5); the imam Abū Aḥmad al-Faraḍī (6); the master Abū Bakr ibn Fūrak (7); and the head of the Alids, the eminent scholar and poet al-Sharīf al-Raḍī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mūsawī (8).
I have cited two of this ḥāfiẓ’s hadiths in his entry in Tadhkirat al-Ḥuffāẓ (9).