trustworthy, terse in expression, and possessed of manifest devotion, worship, and scrupulous piety. I heard him say, “I memorised the Qur’an when I was five years old, and I was brought to the study-circle of Ibn al-Muqriʾ when I was four.”

Al-Khaṭīb remarked, “I have never seen a more beautiful recitation than his. He once spent Ramadan in Baghdad; he led the people in the Tarāwīḥ prayer, then enlivened the remainder of the night with further prayer. I heard him say, ‘Throughout this month I have not lain down to sleep, neither by night nor by day.’”

It is said that the Hanbali judge Abū Yaʿlā read with him privately in the principles of jurisprudence. Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād narrated from him in his Muʿjam, and more than one person recited the variant readings to him.

He passed away in Isfahan, in Jumādā al-Ākhirah 446 AH.

445 – Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī, ʿUbayd Allah ibn Saʿīd ibn Hātim*
The imām, scholar, hadith master, meticulous critic, and champion of the Sunnah: Abū Naṣr ʿUbayd Allah ibn Saʿīd ibn Hātim ibn Aḥmad al-Wāʾilī, al-Bakrī, al-Sijistānī, Shaykh of the Sacred Precinct, and author of the Great Ibānah affirming that the Qur’an is uncreated—a large volume that testifies to the breadth of his learning in the discipline of tradition.

He embarked on the quest for hadith around the year 400 AH, and he received transmissions in the Hijaz, Syria, and Iraq.