I said: He lived for fifty years and died suddenly in Shawwāl of the year 477 AH.
Ibn Bashkuwāl (1) remarked, “The students of jurisprudence in Córdoba revolved around him for debate and advanced study.”
293 – Nāfila al-Ismāʿīlī, Abū al-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada
The imam, mufti, and leading scholar, Abū al-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada ibn Ismāʿīl, son of the great imam Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, from Jurjān.
He received hadith from his father, his uncle al-Mufaḍḍal, Ḥamza ibn Yūsuf the ḥāfiẓ, the judge Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Shālanjī (2), and Aḥmad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ribāṭī.
Those who narrated from him include Zāhir al-Shahhāmī, his brother Wajīh, Abū Naṣr al-Ghāzī, Abū Saʿd ibn al-Baghdādī, Ismāʿīl ibn al-Samarqandī, Abū Manṣūr ibn Khayrūn, Abū al-Karam al-Shahrazūrī, and Abū al-Badr al-Karkhī.
He was born in 407 AH and died in Jurjān at the age of seventy.
He was eminent, highly respected, an imam, an eloquent preacher, adept in both poetry and prose, and endowed with wide-ranging knowledge (3).
Ibn al-Samarqandī transmitted from him the book al-Kāmil by Ibn ʿAdī.