17 – al-Ṣābūnī, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad
The Imām, the erudite scholar, the exemplar, Qur’an commentator, preacher, ḥadīth authority, Shaykh al-Islām: Abū ʿUthmān Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ʿĀbid (1) ibn ʿĀmir, the Nishāpūrī, known as al-Ṣābūnī.
He was born in 373 AH.
He convened his first public session of exhortation in 382 AH, after his father had been killed, when he was nine years old.
He narrated ḥadīth from: Abū Saʿīd ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb; Abū Bakr ibn Mihrān; Abū Muḥammad al-Makhladī; Abū Ṭāhir ibn Khuzaymah; Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Khaffāf; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Shurayḥ; Zāhir ibn Aḥmad al-Faqīh; their peers, and those who came after them.
Among those who transmitted from him were: al-Kattānī; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṣaṣrā; Najā ibn Aḥmad; Abū al-Qāsim ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ; al-Bayhaqī; his son ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʿīl; and many others, the last of them being Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Farāwī.