He said, “Ibn Rawāj informed us; al-Silafī informed us; and Ibn al-Baṭir informed us.

This fascicle was also ascribed to Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Shātil on the authority of Ibn al-Baṭir, but that is a mistake made by one of the students; Ibn Shātil never heard it from him—Allah knows best.

30 – al-Bazdawī, Abū al-Yusr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn

He bore the honorific title al-Qāḍī al-Ṣadr. He was a towering scholar, the leading shaykh of the Ḥanafī school after his elder brother: Abū al-Yusr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn, son of the ḥadith expert ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Mūsā ibn Mujāhid al-Nasafī. Bazda is a fortified citadel (1).

ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad states in al-Qand (2): “Abū al-Yusr was, without reservation, the Imam of the Imams. Delegations would travel to him from every region. He filled the world with his writings on both uṣūl and furūʿ, and he served as qāḍī of Samarqand (3). For a period he also dictated hadith.”

He died in Bukhara on the ninth of Rajab in the year 93 AH.

Ibn al-Samʿānī says that he was born in 321 AH.

Those who narrated from him include ʿUthmān ibn ʿAlī al-Bīkandī, Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Sinjī, Abū Rajāʾ Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad, and others. I say: he did not record the names of his own teachers.