Ibn Nuqṭah said: ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm told me that Abū al-Ḥasan al-Maqdisī said:
“I committed a number of personal names and kunyas to memory and then reviewed them with al-Silafī. He proceeded to recite them all from his own recollection, yet he never once said to me, ‘Well done.’ He then remarked, ‘This is hardly becoming of me. I am an old shaykh in this town; for years no one has come to revise with me, and still my memory is like this.’

Al-ʿImād the scribe said: Al-Silafī settled in Alexandria; men travelled to him, and kings and notables sought blessings by visiting him. He left behind poetry, letters, and scholarly works, after which al-ʿImād quoted several excerpts of his verse.

I read, in the handwriting of al-Sayf Aḥmad (1) b. al-Majd: I heard Aḥmad b. Salāmah al-Najjār say:
‘The two ḥadith masters ʿAbd al-Ghanī and ʿAbd al-Qādir wished to hear the book of al-Lālakāʾī (2)—his Explanation of the Sunnah—from al-Silafī. Al-Silafī would at one time offer an excuse and at another put them off on the pretext of lacking the principal manuscript, until even his wife spoke to him about the matter.’

Ibn al-Najjār (3) said: ‘Al-Silafī lived to such an advanced age that he linked the youngest generation to the eldest. Those who heard from him in Baghdad include: Abū ʿAlī al-Barādānī, ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAlī b. Yūsuf, Hazarasb (4) b. ʿAwaḍ, Maḥmūd b. al-Faḍl, and Abū al-Ḥasan al-Zaʿfarānī,’