ibn Naṣr ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Sahl ibn al-Zāghūnī al-Baghdādī, a prolific author.
He was born in 455 AH.
He heard ḥadith from Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima, ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn al-Maʾmūn, Abū Muḥammad ibn Hazārmard, Ibn al-Naqqūr, Ibn al-Busrī, and many others. He devoted himself to hadith, read extensively, and even transmitted to his long-lived brother, Abū Bakr ibn al-Zāghūnī.
Among those who narrated from him were al-Sallafī, Ibn Nāṣir, Ibn ʿAsākir (1), Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī, ʿAlī ibn ʿAsākir al-Baṭāʾiḥī, Abū al-Qāsim ibn Shaddaqīnī, Masʿūd ibn Ghayth al-Daqqāq, Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, Barakāt ibn Abī Ghālib, ʿUmar ibn Ṭabarzad, and others.
He was an ocean of knowledge and the author of many books, known for his sound religion, fear of God, asceticism, and worship.
Ibn al-Jawzī (2) said, “I kept his company for a time, listened to him, and took from him both jurisprudence and exhortation.”
He died on 17 Muḥarram 527 AH; the crowd that attended his funeral was beyond reckoning.
Ibn al-Zāghūnī said in one of his odes:
Indeed, I shall truthfully recall the creed that binds my heart—
The path of Ibn Ḥanbal, the peerless Imām.
Among its lines:
High above the lofty Throne in His very essence He abides—
Glorified is He, far removed from the speech of any straying unbeliever.