Among those who narrated from him were Abū ʿAlī b. Sukkara, Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdarī, Ismāʿīl b. al-Samarqandī, Ismāʿīl al-Taymī, Muḥammad b. Nāṣir, Abū Bakr b. al-Zāghūnī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Tāj al-Qurrāʾ, Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad b. al-Baṭṭī, and many others.

Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said, “He was a righteous, trustworthy, and devout shaykh of great age. He lived long enough that students flocked to him and crowded around him. He used to reside in an upper room in the Rayḥāniyyīn market (1).”

Ibn Sukkara said, “He was a righteous shaykh of the Mālikī school. A fire broke out in Baghdad near his chamber when he had already become infirm. He was lowered in a basket to the doorway, but when the flames reached the door the man lowering him panicked and fled, and the shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—was burned to death. That occurred in broad daylight on the ninth of Jumada al-Ākhira, in the year 485 AH (2).”

Abū Muḥammad b. al-Samarqandī remarked, “He was the last person to transmit from Ibn al-Ṣalt and he was reliable. He told me, ‘I was born in 398 AH.’”

In that same year passed away: the hadith scholar Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā al-Ḥakkāk (3); the vizier Niẓām al-Mulk Abū ʿAlī (4), who was assassinated; the commentator on al-Bukhārī, Qāḍī Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Khalaf b. al-Murābiṭ; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Qashshāshī; the foremost Qur’an reciter of his day, Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Mughāmī (5); the Seljuk sultan Jalāl al-Dawla Malikshāh (6); and the Ḥanafī shaykh Manṣūr b. Aḥmad al-Bisṭāmī in Balkh.