in Balad (1) from Ahmad ibn al-Husayn ibn Sahl ibn Khalifah and his brother Muhammad; in Egypt from Abu ʿAbd Allah ibn Nazif and Abu al-Nuʿman ibn Turab ibn ʿUmar; in ʿUkbara from Abu Nasr al-Baqqal; and in Baghdad likewise from Hibat Allah ibn al-Hasan al-Lalkāʾi, Talhah ibn al-Saqar, Ahmad ibn ʿAli al-Badi (2), Abu ʿAli ibn Shadhan, and a number of others.
Those who narrated from him were: Abu Bakr al-Khatib—who died twenty-four years before him—the jurist Nasr al-Maqdisi, al-Khidr ibn ʿAbdan, Hibat Allah ibn Ahmad al-Akfāni, Jamal al-Islam ʿAli ibn al-Musallam, Nasr ibn Ahmad ibn Muqatil, Hibat Allah ibn Tawus, the judge Yahya ibn ʿAli al-Farsi, his son the judge al-Zaki Muhammad ibn Yahya, Abu al-Qasim al-Husayn ibn al-Bunn, Abu al-ʿAshaʾir Muhammad ibn Khalil, ʿAli ibn Ahmad ibn Muqatil, Abu Yaʿla Hamzah ibn al-Hububi, and others.
The hadith master Abu al-Qasim Ibn ʿAsakir said: “He was a jurist versed in the laws of inheritance, one of the disciples of the judge Abu al-Tayyib. He died in Damascus on the eleventh of Jumada al-Akhira, 487 AH.”
Bahjat ibn Abi ʿAqil related that Ibn Abi al-ʿAlaʾ was holding an accounting ledger, settling a man’s accounts, when he looked upward and said, “What is this face? It is the image of a person that has appeared before me!” He then threw the ledger down, lost consciousness, and died.
I say: We have received through his transmission several fascicles, such as the hadith of Ibn Abi Thabit, and the fascicle