He also narrated in Damascus, Baghdad and Nisibis, and he copied a large number of manuscripts.
He was born in 511 AH.
A zealous enforcer of what people recognised as right, he championed the Athar (prophetic tradition) with a certain roughness.
Ibn al-Najjar said: “He was much given to quarrelling and to stirring up strife among the various groups.”
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Qaṭīʿī said: “Whenever he heard that an Ashʿarī judge had concluded a marriage, he would annul the contract and issue a legal opinion that any divorce pronounced in that marriage was invalid. This provoked turmoil, so the ruler of Damascus expelled him. He settled in Ḥarrān. When Nūr al-Dīn later took the city, the shaykh asked leave to return to Damascus to visit his mother. Nūr al-Dīn allowed him on condition that he not enter the city. He therefore came and lodged at the Cave of Adam; his mother went out to see him. Later he entered the city on a Friday, whereupon the governor, fearing renewed disorder, sent him back to Ḥarrān. He returned there, and I met him and wrote hadith from him.”
He added: “He died there, shortly before Rabīʿ al-Awwal, in 569 AH.”
I (the compiler) say: In the early fifties of that century, the preacher Sayf al-Balkhī struck Yūsuf ibn Ādam on the nose in Damascus and drew blood, and Nūr al-Dīn banished Ibn Ādam from the city. He was an ordinary transmitter of hadith, of slight attainment.
Aḥmad ibn Salāmah informed me, through the ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī, that “Yūsuf ibn Ādam related to us in 554 AH; he was informed by Jaʿfar ibn Zayd al-Ḥamawī, who was informed by Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Zāghūnī (ḥ).”
I also read before Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Asadī: Yūsuf ibn Khalīl informed us, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Salām informed us, my grandfather informed us; they both said, “Abū Muḥammad al-Ṣarīfīnī informed us, al-Kattānī informed us, al-Baghawī informed us, Abū Khaythamah related to us, Abū Muʿāwiyah related to us, al-Aʿmash narrated to us, from Ibrāhīm, who said:
‘They used to dislike a man’s parading the very best of what he owned.’”