He heard from: ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn ʿAli al-Anmati; Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Naqqūr; Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Busrī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan al-Khallāl; Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada; Abū Naṣr al-Zaynabī; Abū ʿUthmān ibn Warqaʾ—whom he met in Jerusalem; Abū ʿAmr ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Mandah; Abū Manṣūr ibn Shakruyah; Abū Bakr ibn Khalaf al-Shīrāzī; Abū ʿAlī al-Tustarī; Shaykh al-Islām al-Anṣārī; the judge Abū ʿĀmir al-Azdī; and many others besides. His earliest teacher was Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb; he heard from him in Ṣūr (Tyre) and wrote a quantity that defies description. Afterward he devoted himself to his own affairs, worshipping Allah until the certainty of death came to him. He also heard, in Aleppo, from al-Ḥasan ibn Makkī al-Shizarī.

Those who narrated from him include Ibn Nāṣir, Saʿd al-Khayr al-Andalusī, Abū al-Muʿammar al-Anṣārī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Sinjī, Abū Saʿd al-Baghdādī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Fulādh, Abū Bakr al-Samʿānī, and several others; yet what he actually transmitted was little in comparison to what he had learned.

Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir said, “I heard Abū al-Waqt say: Whenever the Imām ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Anṣārī saw al-Muʾtaman he would declare, ‘No one can fabricate a lie against the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—so long as this man is alive.’”

My brother Abū al-Ḥusayn Hibat Allāh told me: I asked al-Silafī about al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī, and he replied, “A precise ḥāfiẓ; I have never seen anyone recite hadith more beautifully than he. He studied jurisprudence under Shaykh Abū Isḥāq, and he copied al-Shāmil from Ibn al-Ṣabbāgh (1) in his own handwriting.”