He heard from Ismaʿil al-Saffar a number of fascicles whose chains of transmission he alone possessed at a higher level; and he also heard from Jaʿfar al-Khuldī, Abū Bakr al-Najjād, and a group of others.
Those who narrated from him include al-Khaṭīb, al-Bayhaqī, al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Buṣrī, and many others.
Al-Khaṭīb said, “We wrote down (hadith) from him, and he was reliable.” (1)
He died in Ṣafar of the year 417 AH.
247 – Sābūr ibn Ardashīr Bahāʾ al-Dawla, Abū Naṣr
The peerless, eloquent vizier: Bahāʾ al-Dawla, Abū Naṣr. He served as vizier to Bahāʾ al-Dawla ibn ʿAḍud al-Dawla.
He was courageous, imposing, self-sufficient, generous, and widely praised; in Baghdad he founded a dār ʿilm (House of Knowledge). (2)
He passed away in 416 AH at the age of eighty.
His patron died at Arrajān in 403 AH while still in the prime of life. (3)
Sābūr was eulogised by al-Babbaghāʾ and a number of other poets. (4)
(1) Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 10, p. 199.
(*) Yatimat al-Dahr, vol. 3, pp. 124–131; al-Muntazam, vol. 8, pp. 22–23; al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, vol. 9, p. 350; Wafayat al-Ayan, vol. 2, pp. 354–356 (for the meaning of Sabur and Ardashir); al-Bidaya wa al-Nihaya, vol. 12, p. 19.
(2) Ibn al-Jawzi relates that in 381 AH he bought a house located between the two city walls, transferred to it books from every branch of learning, named it Dar al-Ilm (the House of Knowledge), and endowed it; it held more than ten thousand volumes, remained for seventy years, and was burned when Tughril Beg entered Baghdad in 450 AH. See al-Muntazam, 8/22. Ibn Khallikan adds that this is the residence to which Abu al-Ala al-Maʿarri alludes in his famous poem: “A nightingale-voiced songstress sang to us in Sabur’s mansion, her melody enlivening the late afternoon.”
(3) Bahaa al-Dawla; his biography has already been given under no. 106.
(4) For the panegyrics composed in his honor, see Yatimat al-Dahr, 3/124–131, and Wafayat al-Ayan, 2/355.