And we have appointed the word of the Sovereign—Omnipotent, Forbearing, Knower of the unseen, All-Powerful—
All-Hearing, All-Seeing, One, who speaks, and who wills whatever decree comes to pass among His creatures.
Whoever sets his own intellect against the manifest Revelation is, in truth, a man undone and ruined;
In abandoning the command of the Chosen One lies trial, so leave whatever contradicts what he said, recite, and take heed. (1)

Abu al-Hasan al-Karaji al-Shafiʿi said: I asked Ibn Ṭāhir about the finest man he had ever met. He replied, “Saʿd al-Zanjānī and ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad al-Anṣārī.”

I asked, “Which of the two was more knowledgeable in ḥadith?”

He answered, “Al-Anṣārī was versatile, but al-Zanjānī knew ḥadith better than he did. When I read to al-Anṣārī I would deliberately omit something to test him; sometimes he would correct me, at other times he would remain silent. But whenever I omitted a man’s name while reading to al-Zanjānī, he would say, ‘You have dropped So-and-so.’ (2)”

Al-Samʿānī said: “Saʿd was more familiar with his own narrations because they were few, whereas ʿAbd Allah transmitted abundantly.”

Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad al-Taymī, the ḥadith master, was asked about Saʿd al-Zanjānī. He said, “A great imam, well-versed in the sunnah.” (3)

Al-Zanjānī died at the beginning of the year 471 AH, at the age of ninety. Had he begun hearing ḥadith in his youth he would have achieved a higher chain, but he only started in middle age.

Abu Bakr ibn ʿUmar al-Naḥwī told us; al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad al-Zāhid told us; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad the ḥadith master told us; Mukhtār ibn ʿAlī the Qur’an-reciter told us, in the year five