His birth: in the year 466 AH.

He heard hadith from Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Busrī, Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿadah al-Ismāʿīlī, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Zaynabī, Rizq Allāh, and several others.

He pursued fiqh under the judge Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar al-Shāmī, examined Muʿtazilite doctrine, then Allah rescued him (1) and he embraced the Sunnah.

Those who transmitted from him include his daughter Sharaf al-Nisāʾ, Ibn ʿAsākir, al-Samʿānī, Sulaymān al-Mawṣilī, Abū al-Yumn al-Kindī, and others.

He granted a written authorization to Abū Manṣūr ibn ʿAfījah.

Al-Samʿānī said: “A jurist, mufti, and ascetic; he chose obscurity over fame, engaged much in dhikr, and avoided pretension.” (2)

I say: he collected and authored works and called people to the Sunnah.

It was said that he did not attend the Friday congregational prayer—no excuse was known—and he was never seen in a mosque.

He died in Dhuʾl-Ḥijjah, 542 AH.

178 — al-Shaqqānī, Abū al-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad (3) *

A jurist and hadith scholar, known as “the Mentor of Nīshāpūr,” Abū al-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥasanawī al-Nīshābūrī, called al-Shaqqānī, was one of those who spent his entire life in the pursuit of hadith. He lived long and stood out as singular in his field.