He heard from Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Khaffāf—his chain of transmission ends with him—, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-ʿAlawī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūsuf al-Iṣbahānī, Ibn Maḥmish, and a number of others.

Ibn Ṭāhir undertook the journey to him, and transmitted from him—as did Zāhir al-Shahhāmī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Shāmātī, Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kanjarūdhī, Saʿīd ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Jawharī, al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Shahhāmī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad the Qurʾān-reciter, Abū al-Asʿad ibn al-Qushayrī, Malīkah bint Abī al-Ḥasan al-Fandurajī (1), and many others. He also granted ijāzah to the ḥadith master Ibn Nāṣir.

Ibn Ṭāhir said: “I travelled from Egypt solely for the sake of al-Faḍl ibn al-Muḥibb, the disciple of al-Khaffāf. When I arrived, I read to him, in the very first session, two fascicles from the ḥadith collection of al-Sarrāj. I felt no sweetness in that, and I supposed I had obtained it without toil, for he neither refused me nor asked me for anything—yet every single ḥadith in those fascicles merited a journey on its own.”

I (the author) say: He authored works of exhortation and was upright, devout, and learned. Al-Samʿānī spoke highly of him.

He died in 473 AH.

He was past ninety years of age—may Allah have mercy on him.

In that same year there died: Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Anṭākī (2); the ruler of Yemen, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣulayḥī (3); and Abū al-Fityān Muḥammad ibn Sulṭān ibn Ḥayyūs, the poet.