Al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī informed me: “My father (1) related to us— I heard Maʿmar ibn al-Fākhir; I heard Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl, and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥājī—both of them saying:
‘We heard the ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir; I heard al-Murtaḍā Abū al-Ḥasan al-Muṭahhar ibn ʿAlī al-ʿAlawī in Rayy say:
“I heard Abū Saʿd al-Sammān, the leader of the Muʿtazilah, state: ‘Whoever does not record hadith has never tasted the sweetness of Islam in the depths of his throat.’ (2)”’”

With this same chain, ʿAlī said: “I asked Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Muẓaffar in Rayy about the death of Abū Saʿd al-Sammān al-Rāzī, and he answered, ‘In the year forty-three.’ (3) That is, 443 AH.”

He added: “He followed the ʿAdlī school—meaning, he was Muʿtazilī (4). He had three thousand six hundred teachers (5), authored numerous works, and never married.”

The ḥadith master ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Kattānī said: “Abū Saʿd was one of the great ḥuffāẓ, ascetic and devout, yet he inclined toward Muʿtazilism. (6)”

Al-Qāsim ibn ʿAlī also reported to us: Abū Muḥammad ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-Kalbī said, “I found written on the back of a fascicle: ‘The ascetic Abū Saʿd Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAlī al-Sammān—shaykh of the ʿAdliyya—died in Shaʿbān of the year five and forty and four hundred,’ that is, 445 AH.”