and in Baghdad from Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Ṣawwāf, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Bundār, Abū Baḥr ibn Kawthar, Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar al-Khuttulī, Abū Bakr al-Qaṭīʿī, Abū Muḥammad ibn Māsī, Ibn Kaysān, and many others; and in Nīshāpūr from Abū ʿAmr ibn Ḥamdān, Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, and several others; and in Damascus from Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd; and in Egypt from the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar al-Mālikī.
Those who narrated from him include: Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣūrī, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb, the jurist Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī, the ḥāfiẓ Sulaymān ibn Ibrāhīm, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ al-Miṣṣīṣī, Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Karajī, Abū al-Faḍl ibn Khayrūn, Yaḥyā ibn Bundār al-Baqqāl, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Anṣārī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Aḥmad al-Kattānī, and many others.
He settled in Baghdad for a lengthy period.
Al-Khaṭīb (1) said: “Al-Barqānī was reliable, devout, firmly grounded, and insightful. Among our teachers we have not seen anyone more solid than he. He was versed in fiqh, possessed a share of Arabic scholarship, and was prolific in ḥadith. He compiled a Musnad in which he incorporated everything contained in the Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. He also gathered the narrations of Sufyān al-Thawrī, Ayyūb, Shuʿbah, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿUmayr, Bayān ibn Bishr, Maṭar al-Warrāq, and others. He never stopped writing until his death; in fact, he died while collecting the ḥadith of Misʿar. He was eager for knowledge, his whole ambition directed toward it. I once heard him say to a jurist known for his righteousness: ‘Pray to Allah — Exalted is He — to remove the craving for ḥadith from my heart, for my love of it has overcome me, and I have no concern except for it.’”