141 – al-Sarrāj, Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan
The shaykh, the imām, an accomplished scholar, ḥadith expert, authoritative transmitter, and—indeed—the last of the senior masters: Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad al-Baghdādī, known as al-Sarrāj, a Qur’an reciter and man of letters.
He said, “I was born at the end of the year seventeen, or at the beginning of the year that followed it” (i.e., 417 AH or 418 AH).
He heard ḥadith from Abū ʿAlī ibn Shādhān, and later, in person, from Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Tawwazī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Sanbak, Abū Muḥammad al-Khallāl, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Shāhīn, Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Muqtadir, Abū Ṭālib al-Ghaylānī, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qazwīnī, Abū Isḥāq al-Barmakī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Tanūkhī, Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Shītā, and several others in Baghdad.
He also received from the ḥāfiẓ Abū Naṣr al-Sijzī in Mecca the musalsal al-awwaliyya (1), and from
(*) Al-Nuzum, 9/151–152; Muʿjam al-Udabaʾ, 7/153–162; Al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, 10/439; Wafayat al-Aʿyan, 1/357–358; Duwal al-Islam, 2/29; Al-ʿIbar, 3/355; Al-Mustafad min Dhayl Tarikh Baghdad, 93–95; Al-Wafi bi-l-Wafayat, 11/92–93; ʿUyun al-Tawarikh, 13, fols. 166–169; Mirʾat al-Zaman, 8/13; Mirʾat al-Jinan, 3/162; Tabaqat al-Isnawi, 2/45–46; Al-Bidaya, 12/168; Dhayl Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 1/100–103; Al-Nujum al-Zahira, 5/194; Bughyat al-Wuʿat, 1/485; Kashf al-Zunun, 492, 957; Shadharāt al-Dhahab, 3/411–412; Brockelmann, 1/594.
(1) This hadith is narrated by ʿAbd Allah b. ʿAmr b. al-ʿAs from the Prophet ﷺ: “The merciful are shown mercy by the All-Merciful; have mercy on those on earth and the One in heaven will show mercy to you.” The scholars and hadith masters transmit it with an unbroken isnad that ends with Sufyan b. ʿUyayna, and each transmitter in the chain says, “It was the first hadith I heard from him.” After Sufyan, however, the sequence of this “firstness” stops; Sufyan relates it—without that clause—from ʿAmr b. Dinar, from Abu Qabus, from ʿAbd Allah b. ʿAmr. Al-Hafiz states in his Sharh al-Nukhba that anyone who extends the “firstness” all the way to the end is in error. The hadith is sound (sahih); its documentation has already been provided above.