I ever read to the shaykh; I handed him the fascicle, but he said, “I am not in a state of wuḍūʾ, so set it down.” (1)

Abū Dharr said, “I heard this ḥadith from Ibn Khumayruwayh.”

I remarked: He was the earliest of his teachers.

He went on: “Before that I entered upon Abū Ḥātim ibn Abī al-Faḍl and heard him dictating, ‘Al-Ḥusayn ibn Idrīs narrated to us…’”

Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said: “Abū Dharr came to Baghdad and transmitted there while I was away. He then set out for Mecca, resided near the Sanctuary, later married among the Arabs, and settled in the Sarawāt mountains. Each year he performed the ḥajj, taught ḥadith, and then returned to his family. He was trustworthy, precise, and devout. He died in Mecca in Dhū al-Qaʿdah, 434 AH. (2)”

Al-Amīn Ibn al-Akfānī said: “Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī Ḥarīṣah narrated to me: ‘News has reached me that Abū Dharr died in 404 AH in Mecca and that he followed the school of Mālik as well as the Ashʿarī creed.’ (3)

I (the author) say: He took up kalām and the doctrine of Abū al-Ḥasan [al-Ashʿarī] from the judge Abū Bakr ibn al-Ṭayyib and propagated it in Mecca. From him the people of the Maghrib carried it back to the western lands and to al-Andalus. Before that, the scholars of the Maghrib did not delve into kalām; rather, they mastered fiqh, ḥadith, or Arabic and avoided speculative theology. Such was the practice of al-Aṣīlī, Abū al-Walīd ibn al-Faraḍī, Abū ʿUmar al-Ṭalamankī, Makkī al-Qaysī, Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī, Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, and the other scholars.