He was born in a year slightly past 340 AH. His first hadith audition in Jurjan took place in 354 AH, where he received traditions from his father—the traditionist Abū Yaʿqūb—together with Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣarrām, Abū Aḥmad ibn ʿAdī, Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, and many others.
In 368 AH he journeyed for knowledge to Isfahan, Rayy, Baghdad, Basra, greater Syria, Egypt, the Two Sanctuaries, Wāsiṭ, Ahwāz, and Kufa. He went on to narrate hadith from Abū Muḥammad ibn Māsi, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Zayyāt, Abū Muḥammad ibn Ghulām al-Zuhri, Abū Bakr al-Warrāq, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Kilābī, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbdān al-Shīrāzī, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Dāraquṭnī, Abū Zurʿah Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Kashshī, Jaʿfar ibn Ḥinzabah the vizier, Maymūn ibn Ḥamzah al-ʿAlawī, and their peers.
Those who transmitted from him include Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī, Abū Ṣāliḥ the muezzin, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Zabḥī (1), Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿadah al-Ismāʿīlī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUthmān al-Jurjānī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Khalaf al-Shīrāzī, and others.
He penned a number of works (2) and spoke authoritatively on ʿilal (subtle textual defects) and on the standing of individual narrators.