and when Niẓām was assassinated, this man became vizier to Malikshah and, after him, to his son Maḥmūd. Fighting then broke out over the throne, Marzubān was captured, and Niẓām’s pages closed in on him and killed him in Muḥarram of the year six (1). His tenure lasted four months, and he was devoted to worship and fasting—may Allah have mercy on him.

57 – Al-Niʿālī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad*

The shaykh, long-lived, the senior musnid of Iraq: Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭalḥah al-Niʿālī, al-Baghdādī, the bathhouse attendant, the “ḥāfiẓ”—that is, he watched over the bathhouse patrons’ clothes and its revenues (2).

His grandfather had taken him to hear from: Abū ʿUmar ibn Mahdī, Abū Saʿd al-Mālīnī, Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ḥinnāʾī, Abū Sahl Maḥmūd al-ʿUkbarī, and Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Mundhir the judge; he was the last person to transmit from them.

Those who narrated from him include: Ibn Nāṣir, Hibat Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Daqqāq, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn al-Ṣābīʾ, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Manṣūr al-Mawṣilī, Abū al-Fath ibn al-Baṭṭī, al-Mubārak ibn al-Mubārak al-Simsār, Yaḥyā ibn Thābit al-Baqqāl, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAllāf, Ṣāliḥ ibn al-Rikhla (3), and Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Raḥabī.