Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ghufayr (1) ibn Muḥammad—better known in his homeland as Ibn al-Sammāk al-Anṣārī, the Khurāsānī, the Harawī, the Mālikī—was the author of several works and the transmitter of the Ṣaḥīḥ from three authorities: al-Mustamlī, al-Ḥamawī, and al-Kushmihani. He said, “I was born in 355 or 356 AH.”
He received ḥadith from Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khayruwayh; Bishr ibn Muḥammad al-Muzanī; a number of scholars in Herat; Abū Bakr Hilāl ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad; Shaybān ibn Muḥammad al-Ḍubaʿī in Basra; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Zuhrī; Abū ʿUmar ibn Ḥayyūyah; ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Sukkarī; Abū al-Ḥasan al-Dāraqutnī and his contemporaries in Baghdad; ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Kilābī and the like in Damascus; Abū Muslim al-Kātib and his cohort in Egypt; Zāhir ibn Aḥmad the jurist in Sarakhs; Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad al-Mustamlī in Balkh; Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Dīnawarī; and others in Mecca.
He compiled a Muʿjam (biographical register) of his teachers and taught in Khurasan, Baghdad, and the Sacred Precinct.
Among those who transmitted from him were his son Abū Makṭūm ʿĪsā; Mūsā ibn ʿAlī al-Ṣiqillī; ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Hawl; the qadi Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī; Abū ʿImrān Mūsā ibn Abī Ḥāj al-Fārisī; Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Dilḥāth; Muḥammad ibn Shurayḥ; Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Manẓūr; ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Tinnīsī; and Abū Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd