61 – Abū Jaʿfar al-Hamadhānī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad*

The shaykh, the imām, the ḥāfiẓ, the itinerant seeker, the ascetic, the last link with the early scholars and the most reliable transmitters: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad, son of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Hamadhānī.

Born: sometime after 440 AH.

He arrived in Baghdad in 460 AH, where he heard only a small amount; he then moved on and studied with Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Naqqūr, Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Busrī, Abū Naṣr al-Zaynabī, and many others.

In Nīshāpūr he learned from al-Faḍl ibn al-Muḥibb, Abū Ṣāliḥ the muʾadhdhin, and a number of others;
in Mecca from Abū ʿAlī al-Shāfiʿī and Saʿd al-Zanjānī;
in Jurjān from Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada and a group;
in Marw from Abū al-Khair Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿImrān;
in Herat from Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī and several others; and likewise in Hamadhān.

He transmitted al-Jāmiʿ of Abū ʿĪsā (the Sunan of al-Tirmidhī) on the authority of Abū ʿĀmir al-Azdī, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, and Thābit ibn Sahlak the qāḍī, all from al-Jarrāḥī.

He was counted among the imams of the Ahl al-Athar and among the senior Sufis.

Al-Samʿānī said: “He travelled widely to distant lands and copied books in his own hand, and I know of no one in his time who heard more ḥadith than he.”

From al-Hamadhānī himself: “I entered Baghdad in the year 460 AH. I used to attend the sessions but would not allow them to write down my name, because I did not know Arabic. Then I went out into the desert and travelled around with the Bedouin Arabs until I returned to Baghdad. Shaykh Abū Isḥāq said to me, ‘You have come back to us an Arab!’ He used to call me al-Khathʿamī because of the time I spent among them.”