ibn Shātil; Aḥmad ibn al-Mubārak ibn Durak; Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ al-Ṣāʾigh; Abū al-Saʿādāt al-Qazzāz; Abū Manṣūr ibn ʿAbd al-Salām; and many others, the last of whom was Abū al-Faraj ibn Kulayb.
Al-Samʿānī said: As I was told, he used to charge one dinar from every student for a copy of Ibn ʿArafah’s fascicle. He granted me an ijāzah, and large numbers of people transmitted from him.
I heard Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī say: Abū al-Qāsim ibn Bayān would remark, “You are not seeking hadith and knowledge; you are seeking an elevated isnād. Otherwise, in my own alley there are people who heard it from me—take it from them. But whoever wants that elevation should weigh out a dinar.”
I heard Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAṭṭār in Marw say, “I weighed out the gold for Ibn Bayān until I was able to hear from him the fascicle of Ibn ʿArafah.” Likewise, Muḥammad ibn Abī al-ʿAbbās told me in Samarkand that he gave him a dinar and heard it from him.
Ibn Bayān was born in 413 AH, and he died on 6 Shaʿbān 510 AH.
Shujāʿ al-Dhuhlī said, “His audition is sound.”
Ismāʿīl ibn al-Samarqandī and others related that they heard him say, “I was born in 412.” In Ibn ʿAṭṭāf’s own handwriting it is recorded that he asked him, and Ibn Bayān replied, “I had thought I was born in 412 until I found, in my father’s handwriting, that it was 413.”
Al-Silafī said: I asked him, and he answered, “I was born between the two ʿEids in 413.” He (al-Silafī) added, “He died while I was in Damascus, and no traditionist in Islam is known who equalled him in the antiquity of his audition.”
So spoke al-Silafī; however, this claim is refuted by al-Baghawī (1), al-Warkī, and others.