Musa, and he narrated from all of them, as well as from Abu Bahr ibn al-‘Asi, Muhammad ibn Shabreen, and Abu al-Hasan Shurayh ibn Muhammad.
He studied the work al-Taqaṣṣī with Ibn Talid; Abu ‘Umar, its author, later transmitted it to us.
He also received the Muwaṭṭaʾ from ‘Iyad and kept his company for a considerable time.
Al-‘Abbar (1) says: He held the judgeship of Ceuta, for which he was praised. He was one of the eminent men of his day—an outstanding jurist, a distinguished scholar, and a consummate littérateur, impeccable in dress (2) and gentle in manner. He mastered both Sunan Abi Dawud and Jamiʿ al-Tirmidhi, and people traveled to him for the loftiness of his chains.
Those who narrated from him include: Abu al-‘Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Rumiyya al-Nabati, Ibrahim ibn Qasum, Abu Sulayman ibn Hawt Allah, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Nur, the hadith scholar Ibn Khalfun, Ibn Dihya and his brother (3), together with many others.
He passed away in Rajab 586 AH.
Ibn Nasir al-Din, in his gloss on al-Dhahabi’s Mushtabih, mentions a different North-African scholar, namely Ali b. Abd al-Jabbar b. Salama b. Aydhun al-Hudhali, the philologist, who died in 519 AH (vol. 2, fol. 135 of the Zahiriyya manuscript). Ibn Hajar, in Tabsir al-Muntabih, adds another name transmitted by Ibn Sahib al-Amali: Jaafar al-Qali.
If our Shaykh were identical with any of these men, the biographers would undoubtedly have said so, especially since he is well known: he is cited by Ibn Bashkuwal, al-Sila, 1/382; al-Marrakushi, al-Muʿjib, p. 76; Ibn Saʿid, al-Maghrib, 1/374; and Ibn Shakir, al-Fawat, 2/388 (consult the note to the last work for further references). Even so, it remains possible that the correct reading is “Aydhun.”
(1) Al-Takmila, 2/541.
(2) Al-Takmila reads: “of fine bearing and appearance,” but we have already noted several times that al-Dhahabi paraphrases, altering individual words.
(3) This addition is necessary for the coherence of the text, for what is meant here is that both Abu al-Khattab Ibn Dihya and his brother Abu Umar Ibn Dihya narrated from him.