256 – Ibn Shakruwayh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Isfahānī *

The shaykh, imām, judge, and long-lived scholar Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Shakruwayh (1) al-Isfahānī.

Yahyā ibn Manda said, “He was the last person to relate from Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Baghdādī and Ibrāhīm ibn Khurrashidh Qūla, and he travelled to Basra.”

He heard hadith from the judge Abū ʿUmar al-Hāshimī (2), ʿAlī ibn al-Qāsim al-Najjād, and a number of others. However, in his copy of the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd he mixed what he had actually heard from that teacher with material he had not heard, and he scratched out parts of the audition record—as al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī showed me—after which he stopped reading to him and journeyed to Basra, where he heard the book from Abū ʿAlī al-Tustarī (3).

Al-Muʾtaman said, “Whatever Ibn Shakruwayh possessed from Ibn Khurrashidh Qūla, al-Jurjānī, and others of that tier is sound. He let me examine his copy of the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd, and I found such confusion that I did not consider it lawful to listen to it.” (4)

Ibn Ṭāhir said, “When we were in Isfahān it was reported that the Sunan were in the possession of Ibn Shakruwayh. I looked into them and found them disordered. I inquired about this and was told: He had a cousin, and the two of them had been together in Basra; the judge was occupied with jurisprudence and had only heard a small portion from