He studied under Muḥallam ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ḍabbī, Abū ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Aḥmad al-Malīḥī, and Saʿīd ibn Abī Saʿīd al-ʿAyyār.
Those who narrated from him include al-Samʿānī, Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū Rūḥ ʿAbd al-Muʿizz, and a number of their peers.
Al-Samʿānī says in his Taḥbīr (1): “He dictated (hadith) for a time in the congregational mosque of Herat, granted me an ijāza, and came to Marw while I was still in Iraq.”
I add: He died a stranger in Marw, in Ṣafar of the year four-and-thirty and five-hundred (2) – 534 AH.
Among the works he transmitted was Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, which he had received from al-Malīḥī, who took it from al-Nuʿaymī, from al-Farabrī, from its author.
In that same year there also passed away: Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr ibn al-Muʾammil al-Ghazzāl; Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭāhir al-Khushūʿī (3), father of Barakāt (4); the Andalusian poet Jaʿfar (5) ibn Muḥammad ibn Sharaf, known as al-Wazīr; the judge Abū al-Muẓaffar Shabīb ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Barūjirdī; Fāṭima bint Abī Ḥakīm al-Khabrī (6); Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Sarakh­sī al-Sarhamardī; and Abū