400 – Ibn Ghaylān, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Hamdānī*
The shaykh, the trustworthy, long-lived scholar and musnid of his age, Abū (1) Ṭālib Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad (2) ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ghaylān ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ghaylān ibn Ḥakīm al-Hamdānī, al-Baghdādī, the cloth-merchant; he was the brother of Ghaylān ibn Muḥammad, who bore the kunya Abū al-Qāsim.

Ghaylān heard from al-Najjād, Daʿlaj, and a number of others.

Al-Khaṭīb transmitted from him and declared him reliable.

He passed away in 410 AH (3).

Abū Ṭālib’s birth, as al-Khaṭīb heard from him, was at the beginning of 348 AH; later al-Khaṭīb heard him say, “I used to be mistaken about my birth year until I found it in my grandfather’s handwriting: Muḥarram 347 AH.” (4)

I add: He also heard from Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāfiʿī in 352 AH and again in 403 AH, and he retained from him eleven fascicles that came to be known as the Ghaylāniyyāt.

He stood alone in the world in possessing such an elevated chain of transmission.

He received two fascicles from Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī, and two fascicles from al-Shāfiʿī that contained Sufyān al-Thawrī’s Qurʾān commentary.