two: Ismāʿīl al-Jawzī (1) in Isfahan, and al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī (2) in Baghdad.

Abū Saʿd said: I studied under him and questioned him about the standing of a number of narrators. He answered me, yet I saw that he had grown weak and that his memory had deteriorated (3).

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Daqqāq remarked: “Abū ’l-Qāsim had no equal; in his day there was none like him. He was held up as the very model of piety and sound guidance (4).”

Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī said: “He was outstanding in Arabic philology and in the evaluation of transmitters.”

Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdarī (5) declared: “I have never met anyone comparable to Ismāʿīl. I debated with him and found him a memoriser of hadith, versed in every science, versatile—and his departure from this world was hastened.”

Al-Silafī transmits this statement from al-ʿAbdarī.

Al-Silafī also said: “I heard Abū ’l-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ṭuyūrī say more than once: ‘No one has come to us from Khurasan like Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad (6).’”

I say: Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī (7) noted regarding him that “al-Jawzī”—with a ḍammah on the jīm and a zāy—is the sobriquet of Abū ’l-Qāsim, and it is the name of a small bird (8).

Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Taymī, may Allah ennoble him, was asked: “Is it permissible to say that Allah has a ḥadd (limit), or—”