325 – al-Jayyānī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh
The erudite scholar Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yāsir al-Anṣārī, known as al-Jayyānī.
He was born in al-Andalus, in Jaén, in Shaʿbān 492 AH.
He travelled extensively to Kairouan, Egypt, the Hijaz, Syria, Iraq, Khurasan and Transoxiana. In Bukhara he studied jurisprudence, mastering khilāf (comparative legal rulings) and jadal (dialectical debate). He then turned to hadith, excelled in it, and settled in Balkh, where he wrote prolifically. Afterward he reached Baghdad and taught there, performed the pilgrimage, and finally made Aleppo his home, endowing its congregational mosque with his library.
Ibn al-Najjār said: “He was truthful and devout. He heard hadith from Ibn al-Ḥuṣayn; Abū Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Marwazī al-Kurāʿī; Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sharīk al-Balkhī; Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Farāwī; Sahl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Masjidī al-Naysābūrī; and Jamāl al-Islām ʿAlī ibn al-Musallam.
“Those who transmitted from him include Abū al-Fatḥ ibn al-Ḥuṣrī, Abū al-Muẓaffar ibn al-Samʿānī, the judge Abū al-Maḥāsin ibn Shaddād, Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿUlwān, Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn Qushām, and others.
“I read, in his own handwriting, the following statement:
‘I was engrossed in dialectics and disputation, applying myself earnestly to them, when I saw the Prophet ﷺ in a dream. He came and stood at my head and said, “Rise, Abū Bakr.” When I rose, he took my hand and shook it, then turned away and said to me…’”}