164 – ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Saʿīd ibn ʿAlī ibn Saʿīd ibn Bishr ibn Marwān al-Azdī*
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ, decisive authority, genealogist, and leading ḥadīth scholar of the Egyptian lands; Abū Muḥammad al-Azdī al-Miṣrī, author of al-Muʾtalaf wa-l-Mukhtalaf (1).
He was born in 332 AH.
His father, Saʿīd, was the foremost specialist in farāʾiḍ (the law of inheritance) in Egypt during his day.
Abū Muḥammad heard ḥadīth from: ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Samarqandī—his senior-most shaykh; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAṭiyyah; and Aḥmad ibn Buhzād al-Sīrāfī—his audition with him took place in the year 342 AH.
He also heard from: Ismāʿīl ibn Yaʿqūb ibn al-Jirāb; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Ward; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Jāmiʿ; Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Qāsim ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Rūdhbārī; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Muzakkī; al-Ḥasan ibn Yaḥyā al-Qulzumī; Abū Aḥmad ibn al-Nāṣiḥ, the Qurʾān exegete; al-Ḥasan ibn al-Khaḍir al-Usyūṭī; Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Naqqāsh al-Tinnīsī; ʿAlī ibn Jaʿfar al-Firyābī; Abū Qutaybah Salm ibn al-Faḍl; and Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥinnāʾī—the author of