and Maḥmūd; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Khamīrawayh; Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl ibn Muḥammad ibn Mujāshiʿ; Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Ṭāqī, the ascetic; and many others. Among his very earliest teachers was al-Jarrāḥī, from whom he heard roughly in the year 410 AH.

He even went so far as to narrate—by way of written authorization (ijāza)—from Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī. He also heard directly from four, or perhaps more, of the pupils of Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm.

Those who reported from him include: al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī; Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Samarqandī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAṭāʾ al-Ibrāhīmī; ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Harawī; Abū al-Fatḥ ʿAbd al-Malik al-Karūkhī; Ḥanbal ibn ʿAlī al-Bukhārī; Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Fāmī; ʿAbd al-Jalīl ibn Abī Saʿd al-Muʿaddal; Abū al-Waqt ʿAbd al-Awwal al-Sijzī—his servant—and others.

The last person to receive his ijāza was Abū al-Fatḥ Naṣr ibn Sayyār, who remained alive until a little after 570 AH.

Al-Silafī said: “I asked al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī about Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī, and he replied:

‘He was a marvel of eloquence in exhortation and in the Sufi path—one of the sovereigns among the scholars. In Baghdad he had listened to Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Khallāl and others. In his preaching sessions he would quote hadiths with their full chains and would forbid anyone to cite them from him in a suspended form.

He was outstanding in Arabic and a ḥāfiẓ of hadith. I read to him the book Dhamm al-Kalām (The Censure of Speculative Theology). In it he narrated a hadith from ʿAlī ibn Bushrā, from Ibn Manda, from Ibrāhīm ibn Marzūq.

I said to him, “Is this the correct wording?” He replied, “Yes; Ibn Marzūq was a teacher of al-Aṣamm and his contemporaries, and the error is still found in his book to this day.” I said, “Indeed—and likewise he dropped two transmitters from two hadiths that he extracted from the Jāmiʿ…’”