Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said, “He held an ijāza from Zāhir ibn Aḥmad, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Shurayḥ, al-Jawzaqī, al-Ḥākim, and Ḥamd ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Iṣbahānī.

Those who narrated from him to us were Abū Naṣr al-Ghāzī, Abū Saʿd ibn al-Baghdādī, al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr al-Bāghbān (1), and Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Daqqāq.

Ibn Ṭāhir relates: Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq told us in Isfahān, “I heard Abū al-Qāsim ibn Mandah say:

‘I read a fascicle to Abū Aḥmad al-Faraḍī in Baghdad and wanted him to endorse it with his signature. He said to me, “My son, if someone in Isfahān were to say to you, ‘That is not so-and-so’s handwriting,’ how would you answer him, and who would testify for you?” After that I never again asked any shaykh for his autograph (2).’”

Al-Samʿānī also reports: I heard al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Khallāl say, “I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mandah remark:

‘I am truly amazed at my own situation. Of most of the people I meet, if I accept what he says merely to placate him, he calls me ‘in agreement’; but if I hesitate over a single word of his speech or a single act of his, he calls me ‘in opposition.’ If, in either case, I mention that the Book and the Sunnah say otherwise, he brands me a ‘Kharijite.’ If a hadith on tawḥīd is read to me, he calls me a mushabbih (anthropomorphist); if it concerns the Beatific Vision, he labels me a ‘Sālimī,’ …’—until he concluded:

‘Yet I cling to the Book and the Sunnah, declaring before Allah my innocence of any likeness, resemblance, peer, opposite, parts, body, or instruments—indeed of everything that people attribute to me or claim against me—that I should ever say about Allah, Exalted be He, anything of that sort, or that I have said it, perceived it, imagined it, or described Him with it (3).’”