He was born on the fourth of Rabiʿ al-Awwal in the year 432 AH.
In 437 AH he heard hadith from: Abū Ṭālib ibn Ghaylān, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Mudhhib, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Muqtadir, Abū al-Qāsim al-Tanūkhī, the judge Abū Ṭayyib al-Ṭabarī, and a number of others.
He alone transmitted the Musnad of Aḥmad (1), the selected narrations of Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī known as the Ghaylāniyyāt (2), and the Yashkuriyyāt (3). Much of his audition of the Musnad took place in 436 AH, as Ibn al-Mudhhib states in the Thabt of Ibn al-Ḥusayn, saying: “He heard the book from me in the years 436 and 437 AH.”
I remark: on this reckoning, his audition in 436 AH occurred while he was still in his fifth year of life. Later he dictated a number of sessions, and students gathered around him in great numbers.
Among those who narrated from him were Ibn Nāṣir, al-Silafī, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-ʿAṭṭār, Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī, Abū al-Fath ibn al-Manī the jurist, the judge of Baghdad Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Dāmghānī, the judge of Damascus Abū Saʿd ibn Abī ʿAṣrūn, Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd Allāh and Ibrāhīm—the two sons of Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdiyyah—and Abū Muḥammad ibn Shaddaqīnī,