Ahmad b. Salamah (1) informed us, through the ḥadith master ʿAbd al-Ghanī b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid; from the latter’s own autograph I copied a fascicle that preserves the written attestations granted by the various shaykhs to al-Silafī for the Qurʾānic readings. It records that he recited the reading of ʿĀṣim with Abū Saʿd al-Muṭarriz; the two transmissions of Hamza and al-Kisāʾī with Muḥammad b. Abī Naṣr al-Qaṣṣār; the reading of Qālūn with Naṣr b. Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī; and the transmission of Qunbul with ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad al-Khiraqī. He completed some of these recitations in the year 491 AH.

The ḥadith master Ibn Nuqṭah (2) said: “Al-Silafī ranged across distant lands; he was a memoriser, reliable, and exact. His teachers and his contemporaries narrated from him. He questioned Shujāʿ al-Dhuhlī, al-Muʾtaman al-Sājī, Abū ʿAlī al-Barādānī, Abū al-Ghanāʾim al-Narsī, and Khumays al-Ḥawzī (3) about the standing of narrators, asking disciplined and precise questions.”

He further related: ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Munḏirī told me in Egypt: “When they wished to read Sunan al-Nasāʾī to Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, they brought him Saʿd al-Khair’s manuscript, which had been carefully collated and which he had heard from al-Dūnī. Al-Silafī asked, ‘Does it contain my name?’ They answered, ‘No.’ Angrily he snatched it from the reader’s hand and declared, ‘I will not transmit except from a copy in which my name is entered.’ Consequently he did not teach the book.”

I add: Al-Silafī had extracted a large section of the work and written it in his own hand. We heard that portion from the students of Jaʿfar al-Hamadhānī, who reported it to us on al-Silafī’s authority.