Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Amīn informed us; Jaʿfar ibn Munayr al-Mālikī informed us; Abū Muḥammad al-ʿUthmānī informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥakam informed us; the ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAlī al-Ghassānī related to us; Ḥakam ibn Muḥammad narrated to us; Abū Bakr ibn Ismāʿīl narrated to us; Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī dictated to us in Mecca, in 310 AH; Hudbah ibn Khālid narrated to us; Mubārak ibn Faḍālah narrated to us from Thābit, from Anas (may Allah be pleased with him):

“The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘Whenever two men love one another for the sake of Allah, the better of the two is the one whose love for his companion is greater.’” (1)

This ḥadith has a good chain of transmission.

Those who died in the same year as the master ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAlī include:

– the Baghdad scholar known as Mufīd, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Baradānī (2), at about seventy years of age;
– the Isfahan ḥāfiẓ called Mufīd, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Mardawayh (3);
– the Khurasan musnid, Abū ʿAlī Naṣr Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Khushnāmī (4);
– the shaykh and muftī of the Sacred Precinct, Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī al-Shāfiʿī (5);
– the Baghdad Qurʾān-reciter, Abū al-Maʿālī Thābit ibn Bundār, the greengrocer (6);
– and the musnid of Baghdad, the noble Abū al-Faḍl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Anṣārī.