28 – Abū Masʿūd al-Bajalī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh*
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ (hadith master), muhaddith, musnid (authority with full chains), and last of the senior shaykhs: Abū Masʿūd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Shādhān (1), al-Bajalī, originally of Rayy and later of Nīshāpūr.
Birth: 362 AH.
His father—the hadith transmitter and ascetic Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh—started him on the path early, so he heard hadith from Abū Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Rāzī, Abū ʿAmr ibn Ḥamdān, Ḥusaynuk ibn ʿAlī al-Tamīmī, and Abū Ṭāhir ibn Khuzaima.
He dedicated himself to this discipline and surpassed his contemporaries.
He also transmitted from Abū al-Naḍr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Sharmaghūlī (2), Abū Bakr al-Ṭirāzī, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Qanṭarī, Abū Muḥammad al-Makhladī, Shāfiʿ al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Bakr ibn Lāl, Aḥmad ibn Firās al-Makkī, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Jahḍam, Ibn Fāris the lexicographer, and many others.