toward the Muʿtazilite school; he was a ḥāṭib layl—an indiscriminate collector of reports in the dark. I asked Ibn ʿAsākir about him, and he said, “He knew nothing at all.” I add: he died in Shawwāl, 526 AH.
- Ibn al-Ṭabarī – Abū al-Qāsim Hibat Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar
The shaykh, the imām, the distinguished Qur’an reciter, long-lived scholar, and senior transmitter for the Qur’an readers and the hadith experts: Abū al-Qāsim Hibat Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar al-Baghdādī, known as al-Harīrī.
He was born on the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ, 435 AH.
He heard hadith from Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Zawj al-Ḥurra, Abū Isḥāq al-Barmakī, Abū Ṭālib al-ʿUshārī, and a number of others. He also learned the various modes of Qur’anic recitation from Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Mūsā al-Khayyāṭ, a disciple of Abū Aḥmad al-Farḍī.
Those who narrated from him include Ibn ʿAsākir (1), Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī, Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, Yaḥyā ibn Yāqūt, ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn Hibat Allāh al-Bundār, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ṭawīlah, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Anbārī, Fāṭimah bint Saʿd al-Khayr, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad al-ʿUmarī, Baqāʾ ibn Ḥunnādh, Abū al-Fatḥ al-Mandāʾī, ʿUmar ibn Ṭabrazad, and Abū al-Yaman al-Kindī. Al-Kindī recited to him in six different readings and was the last person on earth to transmit from him.