anything of this book except from his rough drafts and private notebooks; these are the sources to which I refer whenever I need to identify a report and determine its grading…—until I said:

“Were I to set about describing what I have witnessed of him, I would blacken a multitude of pages and still never exhaust the subject, so extensive is the reading and activity constantly taking place in his presence.” ⦗1⦘

Abu Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAlī al-Hamadhānī said: I heard Muḥammad ibn Abī Zakariyyā al-Muzakkī say,

“No one in this town can dare to fabricate a report while Abū Ṣāliḥ is alive.”

I also heard Abū al-Muẓaffar Manṣūr al-Samʿānī say, “When you enter upon Abū Ṣāliḥ, enter with reverence, for he is the star of the age and the foremost shaykh of this time.” ⦗2⦘

ʿAbd al-Ghāfir said: He passed away on the seventh of Ramaḍān in the year 470 AH.

Abu Saʿd al-Samʿānī said: One of the righteous saw him on the very night he died. It was as though the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had taken him by the hand and said, “May Allah reward you on my behalf with goodness. Excellent indeed is the way you upheld my right, conveyed my words, and spread my Sunnah.” ⦗3⦘

Aḥmad ibn Hibat Allah informed us; ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad informed us; Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir informed us; Abū Ṣāliḥ the mu’adhdhin informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ziyādī informed us; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Bazzāz narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Bishr narrated to us; Bishr ibn al-Sarī narrated to us; Ḥanẓalah ibn Abī Sufyān, from Sālim, from his father, reported:

He divorced his wife while she was menstruating, and the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, instructed him to take her back.

This hadith has a sound chain of transmission. ⦗4⦘