Saʿd—Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn.(1) It was also said that his grandfather was al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Zanjūwayh al-Rāzī, known as al-Sammān.(2)
He was born around 373 AH.
He obtained hadith audition from Abū Ṭāhir al-Mukhlis in Baghdad; in Rayy he heard from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Faḍālah; in Mecca from Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Firās; in Damascus from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Naṣr al-Tamīmī; and in Mecca he also heard from Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Naḥḥās.
I do not think he ever entered Egypt.
Ibn ʿAsākir(3) said: He arrived in Damascus as a seeker of knowledge. He was among the indefatigable, widely traveling scholars, having heard from roughly four thousand(4) shaykhs.
Those who narrated from him include Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kattānī, and a group of scholars from Rayy, among them his nephew Ṭāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn.
I add: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād also transmitted from him.