, and Qāḍī Abū Manṣūr al-Azdī (1); Ibn Bābak (2), the foremost poet of his time; Hibat Allāh ibn Salāmah, the blind Qurʾān commentator; Abū Bakr ibn Mardawayh (3), the ḥāfiẓ; and Ẓafar ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAlawī.

158 – Ẓafar ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Zabbārah al-ʿAlawī

A descendant of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn the martyr, son of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib—he was a noble sayyid, musnid, community leader and frontier fighter, known as Abū Manṣūr al-ʿAlawī, al-Ḥusaynī, from Nīshāpūr and Bayhaq.

He received ḥadith from his uncle Abū ʿAlī ibn Zabbārah, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Duḥaym al-Shaybānī, Abū Bakr al-Najjād, ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā ibn Mātī, Khalaf ibn Muḥammad al-Bukhārī the tent-maker, Abū Zakarīyā al-ʿAnbarī, and several others.

Al-Ḥākim made a personal selection of narrations from him.

Among those who reported from him were Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Abū Ṣāliḥ the muʾadhdhin, Abū Bakr ibn Khalaf the man of letters, ʿUmar—son of Imām Abū ʿUmar al-Basṭāmī—and others.

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir states in al-Siyāq: “His primary manuscripts were sound, but his palace burned down with everything in it and the originals were lost; thereafter he related from the secondary copies. He died in his village and was buried there in 410 AH.”

I add: by my reckoning he had lived a little past eighty years.