al-Raḥmān al-Anṣārī, al-Qanāziʿī—Qanāziʿ is the name of a village (1).

He heard the Muwattaʾ from Abū ʿĪsā al-Laythī, and he also learned from the judge Muḥammad ibn al-Salīm and Abū Jaʿfar ibn ʿAwn Allāh.

He recited the Qurʾān to Abū al-Ḥasan al-Anṭākī and Aṣbagh ibn Tammām.

In the year 367 AH he travelled abroad, where he studied under al-Ḥasan ibn Rashīq, met Husaynak al-Tamīmī during the Pilgrimage season, and reported extensively from Abū Muḥammad ibn Abī Zayd. Thereafter he dedicated himself to scholarship and took the lead in teaching Qurʾānic recitation and jurisprudence in Cordoba.

Among those who transmitted from him were Muḥammad ibn ʿAttāb, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, and several others.

He was an imam, versatile, a ḥāfiẓ, deeply devout, humble, devoted to night worship, an exegete, and thoroughly versed in jurisprudence and language. He declined to sit on the consultative council (2).

He was ascetic and scrupulous, content with little; his supplications were answered; his reputation spread far and wide. He was a leading authority on the variant readings of the Qurʾān and the author of several works (3).

He passed away in Rajab of 413 AH at the age of seventy-two.