The first audition that al-Silafī ever attended—tagging along with the other youngsters simply to watch—was the gathering of Rizq Allāh al-Tamīmī al-Ḥanbalī, who had come to them as an envoy from Isfahān. Al-Silafī—so I read to the ḥadīth master ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (1)—narrated through Ibn Rawāj, who transmitted from him, saying:
“I witnessed Rizq Allāh on the day he entered the city; it was a scene as festive as ʿĪd, indeed even more so. I attended his session in the Jawrjīrī Mosque (2), and Aḥmad ibn Maʿmar al-ʿAbdī said to me, ‘I have already obtained an ijāzah for you, along with the other boys whose names I wrote down.’”

Al-Silafī states in his “Muʿjam of Isfahān” (3): “The preacher Arwā bint Muḥammad, a cousin of my grandmother Fāṭimah al-Shaʿbiyyah and the foremost of the female exhorters, was someone I met often and whose circles I frequently attended. She had heard ḥadīth from Abū Saʿd al-Mālīnī and al-Naqqāsh, and she died in 480 AH.

He also said: ‘The first person from whom I heard and wrote ḥadīth was Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Madanī (4), who himself had heard in 409 AH from Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Yazdī.’

Al-Silafī further received a large body of material from the leader Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Qāsim ibn al-Faḍl al-Thaqafī, who possessed an audition dated 403 AH. Both he and al-Madanī died in 489 AH.

He also took transmission in Isfahān from the chief muʾadhdhin, Abū Masʿūd Muḥammad—