301 – ʿUmar b. Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl, Abū al-Faḍl al-Harawī
The ḥāfiẓ, the exemplar, Abū al-Faḍl b. Abī Saʿīd al-Harawī, an ascetic and the maternal uncle of Shaykh al-Islām Abū ʿUthmān al-Ṣābūnī (1).
He heard ḥadith from ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿAllak al-Jawharī and his circle in Marw; al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd al-ʿAskarī; a number of scholars in Baghdad; ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bakkāʾī in Kufa; Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī in Jurjān; Bishr b. Aḥmad in Isfarāʾīn; Abū ʿAmr b. Ḥamdān in Nishapur; and others of their rank.
He was foremost in knowledge, practice, ascetic discipline, and scrupulous piety.
Among those who narrated from him were: his nephew Abū ʿUthmān, Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Anṣārī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-ʿUmayrī the ascetic, ʿAbd al-Aʿlā b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Malīḥī, and others.
He was the chief traditionist and leading shaykh of Herat.
His father, counted among the eminent scholars, d. 390 AH.
Abū al-Faḍl the ascetic d. Dhū al-Ḥijjah 425 AH (2), at an age somewhere in the eighties.
In that same year there also died: Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muṣʿab the merchant; the musnid of Iraq, Abū ʿAlī b. Shādhān (3) the cloth-seller; Sufyān b. Muḥammad b. Ḥasankūyah al-Sufyānī; and ʿAbd