He authored numerous works, delighted in poetry, composed it himself, and would reward anyone who praised him in verse.

He met a number of ḥadith masters, among them Abū al-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Daqqāq, Yaḥyā ibn Manda, and Abū Naṣr al-Yūnārtī in Isfahan; as well as Abū ʿAlī al-Barādānī, Shujāʿ al-Dhuhlī, and al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī in Baghdad; together with Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī, Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Samarkandī, and several others.

He received his training in Sufism from Maʿmar ibn Aḥmad al-Lunbānī; in jurisprudence from al-Ikkiyā Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Shāshī, and the jurist Yūsuf al-Zanjānī; and in adab (literature and refined learning) from Abū Zakariyyā al-Tabrīzī, Abū al-Karam ibn Fākhir, and ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Faṣīḥī.

He studied the variant readings of the Quran under Abū Ṭāhir ibn Sawwār (1), Abū Manṣūr al-Khayyāṭ, and Abū al-Khaṭṭāb ibn al-Jarrāḥ.

I heard him say, “Whenever the master copy is not in my own handwriting, I take no joy in it.”

He possessed precise retention and constantly investigated whatever puzzled him.

He said that in his era he was unrivaled in the science of hadith and the most knowledgeable of its rules and conventions. He combined exalted chains of transmission with rigorous critique, and by that distinction he excelled beyond his peers.

Abū ʿAlī al-Awqī reported: “I heard Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī say, ‘I have spent sixty years in Alexandria, and in all that time I have never seen its lighthouse except through this aperture,’” and he pointed to the small room in which he used to sit.