Shirawayh al-Daylami said: “He came to us in Hamadhan in the year 502 AH. He was a reliable ḥāfiẓ (hadith master), proficient in this field, of good conduct, well-versed in names and genealogies, and a source of benefit to seekers of knowledge.

Al-Silafī said: (1) “Our companion Maḥmūd ibn al-Faḍl used to pursue hadith, writing down transmissions with both elevated isnāds (ʿālī) and lower ones (nāzil). I reproached him for recording the lower chains, but he replied, ‘By Allah, whenever I come across the audition of those narrators I simply cannot leave it.’

“He related: After his death I saw him in a dream and asked, ‘What has Allah done with you?’ He answered, ‘He forgave me because of this,’ and he drew a fascicle from his sleeve.”

I say: He died in Baghdad, in Jumada I of 512 AH, being in his sixties.

217 – Zarīf ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Aḥmad ibn Shādhān
The scholar and itinerant narrator, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Hīrī al-Naysābūrī.

He heard hadith from his father, Abū Ḥafṣ ibn Masrūr, Abū ʿUthmān al-Ṣābūnī, Abū ʿĀmir al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad, Abū Masʿūd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Bajali, and Abū Saʿd the physician.

Those who narrated from him include Abū Shujāʿ al-Bisṭāmī, Abū al-Muʿammar al-Azajī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, Shuhda the scribe, ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn al-Farāwī, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Khall, and others.