Yaḥyā ibn Mandah (1) al-‘Abdī al-Isfahānī. He was born in 381 AH (2) and was the eldest of his brothers.
He possessed an ijāza from Zāhir al-Sarakhsī, an authorization that no one else shared. He transmitted abundantly from his father, and also from Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Marzubān, Ibrāhīm ibn Khurrashīdh Qūla, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Jallāb (3), Abū Bakr ibn Mardawayh, Abū Dharr ibn al-Ṭabarānī (4), Abū ʿUmar al-Ṭalḥī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Jurjānī, and many others.
In 406 AH he travelled to Baghdad, where he heard ḥadith from Abū ʿUmar ibn Mahdī, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Bayyiʿ, Ibn al-Ṣalt al-Ahwāzī, and every other scholar who was available. In Wāsiṭ he studied with Ibn Khazafa; in Mecca with Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Jahdam and Ibn Naẓīf the Furrier; and in Nīshāpūr with Abū Bakr al-Ḥīrī—yet neither he nor Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī narrated anything from that shaykh because of his Ashʿarī creed.
Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Daqqāq said, “ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was born the very year Abū Bakr ibn al-Muqriʾ died, and his virtues are too many to enumerate.”
He was a man of noble character, chivalry, generosity, and dignity. He held ijāza to rigorous standards and used to say, “I never relate a ḥadith except by way of formal authorization, lest I ruin myself.” He wrote many works, including refutations of the innovators (5).