compiled a concise work on the laws of inheritance, another on legal theory, and a large volume on disputed questions (1).
He died in Baghdad in 478 AH while still middle-aged, at fifty-two years of age—may Allah have mercy on him.
307 – The Judge of Aleppo, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥāmid al-Bikandī *
A noted scholar, the Muʿtazilite shaykh, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥāmid ibn ʿUbayd al-Bikandī al-Bukhārī, a dialectical theologian and an advocate of reprehensible innovation. He was born in 392 AH. He claimed to have heard the Ṣaḥīḥ from al-Kushānī (2) in the year 397, yet al-Kushānī had actually died the very year this man was born.
He transmitted ḥadith from al-Sulaymānī, Manṣūr al-Kāghadhī, ʿAdnān ibn Muḥammad al-Harawī, and others. Those who narrated from him include Abū Ghālib ibn al-Bannāʾ and ʿAlī ibn Hibat Allāh ibn Zahmawayh.
(1) See: Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-Ayan, 3/134; al-Subki, Tabaqat, 5/107; al-Isnawi, Tabaqat, 1/306.
(*) Additional references: Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam, 9/52; al-Dhahabi, Mizaan al-Itidal, 3/462; Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah, 12/136; al-Jawahir al-Mudiyyah, 2/8–10 (Indian ed.); Ibn Hajar, Lisan al-Mizan, 5/52 and 61; Kashf al-Zunun, 378 and 891; Hadiyyat al-Arifin, 2/75.
The nisbah al-Baykandi comes from Baykand. Yaqut vocalised the name with a kasra on the b, a fatha on the k, and a sukun on the n—a reading adopted by al-Suyuti in Lub al-Lubab—whereas neither al-Sam ani nor Ibn al-Athir specified the vowels. Baykand is a town situated between Bukhara and the Jayhun, one stage from Bukhara.
(2) The nisbah al-Kashani, with a damma on the k, derives from Kashaniyah, a locality in the region of Sughd near Samarqand. It refers here to Abu Ali Ismail b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Hajib al-Kashani al-Samarqandi (d. 392/1002 or 391/1001), whose biography appears in vol. 16 of this work, no. 354. Lisan al-Mizan, 5/61, mistakenly records the name as al-Kasa i.