Then, in the early seventies of the fifth century AH, the long-lived shaykh Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūnus al-Nahāwandī arrived among them. From him our preacher received al-Bukhārī’s al-Tārīkh al-Ṣaghīr, the shaykh having himself heard it from the Qadi Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Zanbīl al-Nahāwandī, from the Qadi ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ashqar, from al-Bukhārī. For a time the preacher alone possessed this book with so elevated a chain, yet few managed to hear it from him because his country lay so far away.

Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said: “He came to Baghdad in 532 AH. I sought him out while he was ill, and he brought out the Tārīkh for me. He had heard it with the recitation of the ḥāfiẓ Ḥamzah al-Rudhrāwarī, while Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-ʿAṭṭār, the Qurʾān-reciter, read it aloud. I rejoiced at the loftiness of the chain and the rarity of the book, informed a number of people, and read it to him. He then returned home, whereupon the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir journeyed to Mushkān and heard it from him. He was a stately shaykh, comely in appearance, naturally gracious, affectionate, and truthful.”

I add: The judge of Damascus, Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Harastānī, received this book from him by ijāza. Abū al-Ḥasan lived on until the ḥāfiẓ Yūsuf ibn Aḥmad al-Shīrāzī reached him; al-Shīrāzī traveled to Mushkān and heard it from him in 550 AH.

He (al-Shīrāzī) said: In that very year he died, whereas his own audition of the Tārīkh had taken place in 476 AH.

I further note: The last person to transmit from him with direct audition was ʿAbd al-Barr ibn Abī al-ʿAlāʾ. He lived eighty-four years.

208 – Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Manṣūr, Abū Saʿd al-Naysābūrī *
The imām, the erudite scholar, the shaykh of the Shāfiʿīs: Abū—