88 – Fāṭima bint al-Baghdādī, Umm al-Bahā’, daughter of Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad
The shaykha, learned scholar, preacher, righteous devotee, centenarian, and musnida of Isfahān: Umm al-Bahā’ Fāṭima bint Muḥammad ibn Abī Saʿd Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Baghdādī al-Isfahānī.
Her birth: sometime after 440 AH.
She received ḥadith from: Aḥmad ibn Maḥmūd (1) al-Thaqafī; Ibrāhīm ibn Manṣūr, the grandson of Baḥruwayh; Abū al-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad al-Rāzī, the Qurʾān-reciter; and Saʿīd ibn Abī Saʿīd al-ʿAyyār.
She lived to a great age and remained the sole source for certain narrations.
Those who narrated from her include: al-Samʿānī, Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib ibn Shahriyār, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Muḥammad al-Khwārazmī, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Rārānī, Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad Āyūsān, and her grandson through her daughter, Dāwūd ibn Maʿmar.
Al-Samʿānī (2) said: “A shaykha, exceedingly long-lived, a musnida,” and he recorded her year of birth.
Abū Mūsā said: “She passed away on the twenty-fifth of Ramaḍān in the year 539 AH,” adding that she was nearly ninety-four years old.