Maḥmūd al-Zūlawhī, a merchant from Marw, better known as al-Kurāʿī.
Some maintained that his given name was Aḥmad. He came from the village of Zūlāh in the environs of Marw. A righteous, upright and devout shaykh, people travelled to him, and Zūlāh itself became a destination for students of hadith. He was the last person to transmit from his maternal grandfather Abū Ghānim al-Kurāʿī—the companion of ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Naḍrī—from whom he heard about twenty fascicles.
Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said: “I heard from him—read by Abū Ṭāhir al-Sinjī—twelve fascicles. Later our shaykh, the preacher Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Marwazī, brought him to the khānqāh, and the portions already received from him were read aloud; I listened to them… until he said:
‘He was born on the twentieth of Shawwāl in the year 432 AH.
He died toward the end of 524 AH, or at the beginning of 525 AH, in his village (1).’”
I add: Among those who narrated from him in Syria were Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Marwazī—who lived on until 580 AH—and Dāwūd ibn Muḥammad al-Khālidī.
Those who died in the year four (i.e., 524 AH) include: Abū al-Mawāhib Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Mulūk al-Warrāq (2); the leading poet of his day, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazī, who died in Balkh at the age of eighty-three; Ismāʿīl ibn al-Akhshīdh al-Sarrāj; Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Bāriʿ (3); and ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ghazāl in Mecca.