I (the author) say: He passed away in 433 AH, having almost reached one hundred years of age.

The material he held in highest esteem were the variant readings and the Qur’anic commentary he had received from al-Naqqāsh. Yet al-Naqqāsh is unanimously judged weak in hadith, though not in the readings. Therefore, if al-Zaydī himself is also subject to criticism, one cannot take much pride in the loftiness of his chains for either discipline. Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī, to be sure, declared him generally reliable, just as he had vouched for his teacher al-Naqqāsh, but when reliability and criticism conflict, the criticism takes precedence. I really do not know what to say.

It has reached me that al-Zaydī was once sent as an emissary to the Byzantine emperor. As soon as he was seated, the Christians began to sing and set the organ playing. Al-Zaydī remained perfectly still while listening, and they were amazed at his composure. When he rose they found blood beneath his ankle—he had braced himself so firmly that he never moved.

328 – Ibn al-Simsār, ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Dimashqī

The venerable shaykh, transmitter, and scholar Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn al-Ḥusayn, known as Ibn al-Simsār of Damascus.

He narrated from: his father, the hadith scholar Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad; his other brother Aḥmad; Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Abī al-ʿAqab; Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Marwān; Aḥmad ibn Abī Dujānah; Abū ʿAlī ibn Ādam al-Fazārī; Abū ʿUmar ibn Faḍālah; Muẓaffar ibn Ḥājib ibn Arkīn; al-Dāraquṭnī; and the jurist Abū Zayd al-Marwazī, from whom he obtained a copy of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. He also reported from many other scholars.