Abū al-Muẓaffar Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Tamīmī, al-Samʿānī, the Khurāsānī from Marw, and the father of the foremost ḥadīth master, Abū Saʿd.

He was born in 467 AH.

He studied in person with Abū al-Khayr Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿImrān al-Ṣaffār, from whom he heard the entire Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī. He also received transmission from his own father, from Abū al-Qāsim al-Zāhirī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭāhirī, and Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUbayd Allāh al-Hāshimī.

Later he travelled on; in Nīshāpūr he heard ḥadīth from ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Akhram, Naṣr Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Khushnāmī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Abī al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī and others. He entered Baghdad in 497 AH and there heard from Thābit ibn Bundār, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Anṣārī, and several more.

In Kūfa he studied under Abū al-Baqāʾ al-Ḥabbāl, and he likewise learned in Mecca and Medina. He preached for a time at the Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad. He read al-Khaṭīb’s History with Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Ābanūsī. In Hamadhān he heard from Abū Ghālib al-ʿAdl, and in Iṣfahān from Abū Bakr, the grandson of Ibn Mardawayh, as well as Abū al-Fatḥ al-Ḥaddād.

His son relates: “Then, in 509 AH, he set out again, taking me and my brother with him. He enabled us to hear ḥadīth from al-Shīrawī and others, and he dictated one hundred and forty sessions in the congregational mosque of Marw—sessions which everyone who reviewed them acknowledged were without precedent. (1) While preaching he would cite prophetic reports…"