His father, the ḥadīth scholar Nāṣir, died while still a young man. Consequently, his maternal grandfather Abū Ḥakīm taught him the Qur’an and arranged for him to receive audition from Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Busrī and Abū Ṭāhir ibn Abī al-Ṣaqr al-Anbārī.

He then set out in search of knowledge and heard ḥadīth from ʿĀṣim ibn al-Ḥasan; Mālik ibn Aḥmad al-Bāniyāsī; Abū al-Ghanāʾim ibn Abī ʿUthmān; Rizq Allāh al-Tamīmī; Ṭirād al-Zaynabī; Ibn Ṭalḥah al-Niʿālī; Naṣr ibn al-Baṭar; Abū Bakr al-Ṭuraythīthī; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Yūsufī; al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Busrī; Abū Manṣūr al-Khayyāṭ; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Anṣārī; Abū al-Faḍl ibn Khayrūn; Jaʿfar al-Sarrāj; al-Mubārak ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār; and many others—until he came to study under Abū Ṭālib ibn Yūsuf, Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Ḥusayn, Qāḍī Abū Bakr, and Ismāʿīl ibn al-Samarqandī.

He read books in quantities that defy description, mastered the foundational works, gathered and authored writings, and his reputation spread far and wide, though he never excelled in the sciences of narrator criticism and hidden defects.

Eloquent and pleasant in recitation, he had a strong command of Arabic, excelled in philology, and was endowed with many virtues.

He enjoyed a number of exceptionally high-level ijāzahs. In the early 470s AH, not long after his birth, he was granted authorization by the ḥāfiẓ Abū Ṣāliḥ Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik the muʾadhdhin; Abū al-Qāsim al-Faḍl ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muḥibb; Fāṭimah bint Abī ʿAlī al-Daqqāq; the ḥāfiẓ Abū Isḥāq al-Miṣrī al-Ḥabbāl; the ḥāfiẓ Abū Naṣr ibn Mākūlā; Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Naqqūr; the preacher Abū Muḥammad ibn Hazār Mardā al-Ṣarīfīnī; Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAliyyaka al-Naysābūrī; and a number of others. His father—may Allah have mercy on him—had hastened to secure these licenses for him, and Ibn Mākūlā even brought several of them from distant regions.

Among those who later narrated from him are Ibn Ṭāhir, Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdarī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, and Abū