He performed the pilgrimage in 414 AH and travelled on to Yemen. While in Egypt he heard ḥadīths from Shuʿayb ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Minhāl and scholars of his generation. Later—during 441 AH, and slightly before and after that year—he arranged for his son to audition traditions from Ibn Ḥimmasa, Ibn al-Ṭaffāl, and several others. In Damascus he himself received transmission from ʿAlī ibn al-Simsār.

He recited the Qur’an to al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿĀmir, and in Mecca he studied a variety of canonical readings with Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Kārazīnī. Around the time of the great famine, close to 460 AH, he relocated to Alexandria, where many students read to him. Among those who copied his narrations were the ḥāfiẓ Abū Zakariyyā al-Bukhārī, Makkī al-Rumaylī, Ghayth al-Armanāzī, and ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Shīḥī; his own son Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Shāhid also heard a large number of reports from him in both Alexandria and Egypt.

Al-Silafī said, “He was trustworthy, devout, and widely known for his generosity.”

His son records in his Mashyakha: “Our father narrated to us, ‘Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan narrated to us—this is I, ʿUmar al-Ṣayrafī, through the selected narrations of Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī (1)…,’ whereupon he cited a ḥadīth.”

The son then added, “While in the agony of death my father kept telling me, ‘My only regret is that I am dying before what I have heard has been transmitted from me in the exact form I desired.’”

He died in 491 AH.

112 – al-Lawātī, Abū Muḥammad Marwān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik *
The distinguished scholar and judge Abū Muḥammad Marwān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Lawātī, a Mālikī imam from Tangier in the Maghrib, was a master of numerous disciplines and of Qur’anic readings. He performed the pilgrimage and recited the Qur’an to Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Nafīs and to others.