I said, “This fascicle belongs to the endowment of Shaykh al-Ḍiyāʾ, and the opening line, in his own hand, reads: ‘Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī narrated to us…’”

Al-Samʿānī added: He told me, “The Byzantines once captured me. They kept saying, ‘Say: The Messiah is the son of God, and we will look after your welfare,’ but I never uttered it. During my captivity I learned their script. He had no formal training in grammar, yet I heard him remark, ‘When a fly lands on something white, it darkens it; on something black, it lightens it; on bare earth, it sprinkles it with specks; and on a wound, it makes it fester.’

“I received from him al-Ṭabaqāt by Ibn Saʿd, al-Maghāzī by al-Wāqidī, and more than two hundred other fascicles. He also told me, ‘I was born in al-Karkh, and when I was four months old we moved to al-Naṣriyya.’”

Ibn Nuqtah said: Qāḍī Abū Bakr narrated the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī from Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Muhtadī Billāh; Abū al-Fatḥ ibn Abī al-Fawāris informed us; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Nuʿaymī informed us; and al-Farabrī conveyed it from him.

13 – Ibn al-Samarqandī, Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar*
The shaykh, the imām, the beneficial hadith scholar, the reliable transmitter—Abū al-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar ibn Abī al-Ashʿath al-Samarqandī, born in Damascus and later a resident of Baghdad, renowned for the many teaching circles he convened.

He was born in Damascus in Ramadan of the year 454 AH, making him younger than his brother, the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd Allāh (1).