I add: he also wrote a work entitled The Basmalah, which we have heard, another called Washing the Feet, as well as a large, widely known Qur’an commentary, and other compositions (1) – may Allah, exalted is He, have mercy on him.

437 – Ibn Silwān, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Yaḥyā al-Māzinī
The shaykh and hadith transmitter Abū ʿAbd Allah Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Yaḥyā b. Silwān al-Māzinī, a Damascene, known as Ibn al-Qammāḥ.

He possessed nothing to relate except the manuscript of Abū Musʿhir and the material that accompanies it, which he had received from al-Faḍl b. Jaʿfar al-Tamīmī.

Those who reported from him include: al-Khaṭīb, al-Kattānī, the jurist Naṣr al-Maqdisī, al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. Abī al-Ḥadīd, Sahl b. Bishr al-Isfarāyīnī, Najā b. Aḥmad, Abū Ṭāhir al-Ḥinnāʾī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Nasīb, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī, Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad—the two sons of al-Mawāzīnī—ʿAbd al-Munʿim b. al-Ghamr, and others.

He was born in 362 AH and passed away in Dhū al-Ḥijjah, 447 AH.

A man of similar standing in his time was Abū al-Ḥasan b. Ḥimmiṣah (2) al-Ḥarrānī—transmitter of the session on “The Leaf”—who likewise had nothing else to his name.

Thus a number of figures became celebrated even though the material they had heard was slight, and that was only on account of their long lives and lofty isnāds. By contrast, more than a few eminent scholars are barely known because they died in their prime, before the age of transmission.