I (the author) say: His birth took place in 434 AH.

His father—the ḥadīth scholar Abū al-ʿAbbās—devoted great attention to him, arranging for him to attend many audition sessions in 440 AH. After that he personally heard ḥadīth from: Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥimmaṣa, the transmitter of the Majlis al-Biṭāqa; ʿAlī ibn Rabīʿa; ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Fārisī; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ṭufāl; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Fatḥ al-Ḥakīmī; Abū al-Faḍl al-Saʿdī; Tāj al-Aʾimma Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Hāshim; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Saʿdūn; and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Tarjumān. Altogether, his teachers numbered forty-seven.

Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī compiled for him a selection from their narrations and also prepared for him the collection of sudāsiyyāt (hadiths with six-link chains). Those who narrated from him include Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī himself, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿdūn al-Qurṭubī, Abū Muḥammad al-ʿUthmānī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn ʿAskar, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ḥaḍramī, Abū Ṭālib Aḥmad ibn al-Musallam, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAwf the jurist, Ismāʿīl ibn Yāsīn, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mūqā, and others.

He died on the sixth of Jumādā al-Ūlā, 525 AH, at the age of ninety-one.

In the same year there also passed away: Abū al-Suʿūd Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Mujallī—spelled with a jīm bearing sukūn; the preacher Abū Naṣr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ṭūsī in Mosul; the Nizāmiyya professor Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Salmān ibn al-Fatā (1); the exemplary shaykh Ḥammād ibn Muslim al-Dabbās (2); the Andalusian physician Abū al-ʿAlāʾ Zuhr ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zuhr of Seville (3); and Abū Ghālib Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Māwardī (4).