He travelled in search of knowledge and studied under al-Ghazālī and Ilkiyā (1). In Basra he received ḥadith from the judge Abū ʿUmar al-Nahāwandī. Later he took a teaching seat in Baghdad, and al-Samʿānī transmitted from him. He died in Muḥarram 541 AH, in his early eighties.

97 – Ibn al-Ābanūsī, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī*
A jurist, mufti, and devoted worshipper, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad was the son of the ḥadith scholar Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ābanūsī al-Baghdādī. A Shāfiʿī who acted as a legal agent, he was born in 466 AH.

He heard ḥadith from Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Busrī, Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada, Abū Naṣr al-Zaynabī, and others, and he studied jurisprudence under the Chief Judge al-Ḥamawī (2).

Though he once engaged in kalām and Muʿtazilite thought, Allah’s grace led him back to the people of the sunnah and faithful adherence. He became proficient in the school’s jurisprudence, the laws of inheritance, disputed questions, and legal formularies. Trustworthy and ascetic, he authored works, was constant in remembrance, deeply devout, and inclined to a life of seclusion.