“Come behind me.”

I followed him for roughly ten steps, whereupon the vision ended. After waking, I went to Abū Ṭālib Ibrāhīm ibn Hibat Allāh al-Diyārī, the ascetic—for I never carried out any matter without consulting him—and I told him what I had seen. He said to me, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ wants you to give up dialectical disputation and busy yourself with his hadith, for he has already commanded you to follow him.”

So I abandoned disputation—though it had been dearer to me than hadith—and devoted myself entirely to the study of hadith.

Ibn al-Ḥuṣrī said: “Abū Bakr al-Jayyānī was a ḥāfiẓ, a scholar of hadith, and a man of merit.” Some people of Aleppo reported that al-Jayyānī died on the night of Saturday, the seventh of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir in the year 563 AH. Abū al-Mawāhib ibn Ṣaṣrā said: “He died in Aleppo in Jumādā al-Ūlā, and he had reached the age of seventy.”

Maḥmūd ibn Arsalān stated in his History of Khwārazm: “Muḥammad ibn Yāsir narrated to me; Muḥammad ibn Muʿtaṣim of Balkh narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Daqqāq narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm informed us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī the Qur’an-reciter informed us; Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Manda informed us; Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah and Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr al-Razzāz informed us, saying:

‘Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ḥayyān narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Wāsiʿ informed us, from Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn, from Abū Hurayrah, traced back to the Prophet ﷺ: “The Fire is forbidden to every humble, gentle, approachable, and easy-going person.” (1)’

This chain is entirely transmitted through narrators named Muḥammad.