Yusuf al-Sahmi, together with a number of scholars in Jurjan; from Abu’l-Qasim ibn Bishran and his contemporaries in Baghdad; from Abu Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ and others of similar rank in Isfahan; from al-Mussaddad al-Umlūki; from ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn al-Tubayz al-Halabi in Damascus; from Abu Dharr al-Harawi in Mecca; and from al-Hasan ibn al-Ashʿath in Manbij. He kept the company of the master Abu ʿAli al-Daqqaq and of Ahmad ibn Nasr al-Talqani, collected and authored works, and even prepared a draft of a History of Marw.

Zahir al-Shahhami said, “Abu Salih extracted one thousand hadiths from one thousand of his shaykhs.” (1)

Abu Bakr al-Khatib said (2), “Abu Salih came to us while Ibn Bishran was still alive; he wrote from me and I wrote from him, and he was reliable.”

I say: He was born in 388 AH, and the earliest of his teachers was Abu Nuʿaym al-Isfaraʿini.

Those who narrated from him include: his son Ismaʿil ibn Ahmad; Zahir and Wajih, the two sons of al-Shahhami; ʿAbd al-Karim ibn Husayn al-Bistami; Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ibn al-Fadl al-Furawi; ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn al-Qushayri; his nephew Abu al-Asʿad Hibatu’r-Rahman ibn ʿAbd al-Wahid; and several others.

ʿAbd al-Ghafir said in as-Siyāq: “Abu Salih the muʾadhdhin was trustworthy, precise, a hadith scholar and a Sufi, unique in his method, his collecting, and his benefaction; I have never seen his equal in memorizing the Quran and gathering hadiths.

“He heard an enormous amount, compiled topical collections and catalogs of shaykhs, and gave the call to prayer for many years purely for Allah’s sake. He used to urge me to study hadith, yet I was unable to gather…”