the son of a devout worshipper.
Abū Ṭāhir was born in 327 AH.
His father had him attend hadith sessions in 325 AH, and thereafter he learned from Abū Ḥāmid ibn Bilāl, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Qaṭṭān, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yaʿqūb al-Karmānī (1), al-ʿAbbās ibn Muḥammad ibn Qūhiyār, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Naṣrī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Muḥammadābādī, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Ḥafṣ al-Jurjīrī (2), ʿAbdūs ibn al-Ḥusayn, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm, Abū ʿAlī al-Maydānī, Ḥājib ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭūsī, ʿAlī ibn Ḥamshādh, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣaffār, and many others.
He came within a hair’s breadth of hearing from Ibn al-Sharqī.
He was an authority in the school, deeply learned in the science of legal instruments (3)—on which he authored a treatise—highly proficient in Arabic, and of great stature. He served as the imam of the hadith scholars, their principal transmitter, and their mufti.
ʿAbd al-Ghāfir ibn Ismāʿīl said: “He dictated for roughly three years. Had it not been for the poverty and the precarious livelihood that so often afflicts the people of knowledge (4), no one would have surpassed him. We were informed about him by my grandfather the Imām, Abū Saʿd ibn Rāmish, ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Maḥmī, and Muḥammad…”