as well as hadith, legal theory, Qur’anic exegesis, the laws of inheritance, and the Arabic language. He lived to such an advanced age that seekers came to him from every direction, and his gatherings overflowed with benefit. He used to sit in his own circle in the Manṣūr Mosque, preaching and issuing fatwas, and he was eloquent of speech, having studied Qur’anic recitation with al-Ḥammāmī … until the narrator said:

He arrived in Isfahan as an emissary in the year 483 AH, and more than sixty of its people transmitted hadith from him. He also said: “Sixty shaykhs in Baghdad related to us, and fourteen others from elsewhere; still others said, ‘Rizq Allāh al-Tamīmī informed us.’” (ḥ)

I myself read to Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Abarqūhī on more than one occasion. Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Sābūr narrated to you in Shiraz in the year 619 AH, a reading that took place while I was only five. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad al-Adamī informed us; Rizq Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb narrated to us; Abū ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad al-Fārisī informed us; Muḥammad ibn Makhlad narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Karamah narrated to us; Khālid ibn Makhlad narrated to us, from Sulaymān ibn Bilāl, from Sharīk ibn Abī Namir, from ʿAṭāʾ, from Abū Hurayrah, who said:

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Allah said: ‘Whoever shows enmity toward a friend of Mine, I have indeed declared war upon him …’” — and he mentioned the rest of the hadith.

Al-Bukhārī recorded it (1) through Ibn Karamah, and our chain meets his with fewer intermediaries. It is Ibn Karamah who alone preserved this route.