436 – Sulaim ibn Ayyub ibn Sulaim, Abū al-Fath al-Rāzī
The Imām, Shaykh al-Islām, Abū al-Fath al-Rāzī, adherent of the Shāfiʿī school.
He was born in the early 360s AH.
He related hadith from: Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Juʿfī; Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Tamīmī; the ḥāfiẓ Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Baṣīr al-Rāzī; Ḥamd ibn ʿAbd Allāh—both of them associates of Ibn Abī Ḥātim; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣalt al-Mujbir; Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn Fāris the philologist; Abū Aḥmad al-Faradī; the master Abū Ḥāmid al-Isfarāʾīnī—under whom he also studied jurisprudence—and a number of others besides them.
He took up residence in greater Syria as a murābiṭ, disseminating knowledge solely for the sake of Allah.
Those who narrated from him include: Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb, Abū Muḥammad al-Kattānī, the jurist Naṣr al-Maqdisī, Abū Naṣr al-Ṭuraythīthī, Sahl ibn Bishr al-Isfarāʾīnī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Nasīb, and others.
Al-Nasīb said: “He is trustworthy (thiqah), a jurist, Qurʾān reader, and hadith scholar.”
Sahl ibn Bishr reported: “Sulaim told us that when he was a small boy in Rayy, about ten years old, he attended one of the shaykhs who was prompting his students. The shaykh said to me, ‘Step forward,’