Al-Samʿānī (1) said: “He was a righteous shaykh, constant in prayer, sound in conduct though somewhat rough. I heard a great deal from him, and I never entered his presence but that he was occupied with some good deed—either praying, copying, or reciting. He used to read in a manner that was hard to understand. He was well versed in ḥadith and their transmission-routes; he wrote from everyone who came and went. His handwriting could not be deciphered by just anyone, and he would remark, ‘For an audition, merely catching its scent is enough.’”

I say: This cannot be accepted.

He died on the twenty-first of Jumada I in the year 533 AH. His father was counted among al-Silafī’s teachers.

46 – Ibn al-Sallāl, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Karkhī

The distinguished imam, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Sallāl al-Karkhī, the bookseller and ink-merchant, kept a shop by the Nubian Gate (2).

He heard ḥadith from Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima, Abū al-Ghanāʾim ibn al-Maʾmūn, and Jābir ibn Yāsīn, and he also received from Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad ibn Wishāḥ, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Bayḍāwī, and Abū Bakr ibn Sīāwush al-Kāzarūnī. In his day he alone narrated from these three.

He was born in 447 AH.