al-Samarqandī, Abū al-Faḍl ibn al-Muhtadī bi-Llāh, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣirmā, and a number of others.

Ibn Khayrūn said: “Reliable.”

Shujāʿ al-Dhuhlī stated: “He died on the eighteenth of Ṣafar in the year 470 AH.”

I say: His audition from al-Kattānī was when he was five years old, and from that point students began bringing their children to the gatherings at the mere age of physical attendance. The orderly method was thus corrupted: in fact, a written authorisation (ijāzah) is stronger than mere presence, for whoever attends without understanding has not truly borne any knowledge, whereas the one who is given an ijāzah may indeed carry it. If physical attendance is joined to an explicit licence from the shaykh to transmit, that is the best of all.

178 – al-Dīnawarī al-Labbān, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Naṣr *

The Imām, ḥadith scholar, itinerant transmitter, master of asānīd, and truthful narrator—Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Dīnawarī, known as al-Labbān—settled in Ghazna and was its principal traditionist.

He heard ḥadith from Abū ʿUmar ibn Mahdī and his peers in Baghdad; the judge Abū ʿUmar al-Hāshimī; a group in Basra; Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī; Abū Bakr al-Ḥīrī; several scholars in Nīshāpūr; Abū Saʿīd al-Naqqāsh; ʿAlī ibn Mīla the expert in inheritance law, and a number of others in Isfahan.

Those who narrated from him include Musāfir and Aḥmad—the two sons of Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bisṭāmī—together with several people from that region whom we do not know, and he granted ijāzah to Ḥanbal ibn ʿAlī.

Al-Samʿānī said: I heard our teacher al-Muwaffaq ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm say: “Our shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Labbān al-Dīnawarī was in Ghazna and possessed a copy of ‘al-Ḥilyah’ from Abū Nuʿaym. A Ṣūfī came to him wanting to hear it, so he said, ‘This book contains mention of those who were tried; if you wish to…’”