—of Qurashi stock, Taymi in lineage, Bakri by descent, Baghdadi in upbringing, Hanbali in jurisprudence, a preacher, and the author of many works.
He was born in 509 AH—some say 510. His first hadith audition took place in 516 AH.
He studied under Abū al-Qāsim Ibn al-Ḥuṣayn; Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Bāriʿ; ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Dīnawarī; Aḥmad ibn Aḥmad al-Mutawakkilī; Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ, the muʾadhdhin; the jurist Abū al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Zāghūnī; Hibat Allāh ibn al-Ṭabar al-Ḥarīrī; Abū Ghālib Ibn al-Bannāʾ; Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Mazrafī; Abū Ghālib Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Māwardī; Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Iṣbahānī, the preacher; the qāḍī Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Anṣārī; Ismāʿīl ibn al-Samarqandī; Yaḥyā ibn al-Bannāʾ; ʿAlī ibn al-Muwaḥḥid; Abū Manṣūr ibn Khayrūn; Badr al-Shīḥī; Abū Saʿd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Zawzanī; Abū Saʿd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Baghdādī, the ḥāfiẓ; ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn al-Mubārak al-Anmāṭī, the ḥāfiẓ; Abū al-Suʿūd Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Mujallī; Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Zurayq al-Qazzāz; Abū al-Waqt al-Sijzī; Ibn Nāṣir; Ibn al-Baṭṭī; and many others—altogether a little over eighty shaykhs. About them he compiled a teachers-catalogue (Mashyakha) in two volumes⦗1⦘.
Although he never travelled in pursuit of hadith, he nevertheless possessed the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad, the Ṭabaqāt of Ibn Saʿd, al-Khaṭīb’s History, and other works with elevated chains, along with the two Ṣaḥīḥs, the four Sunan collections, al-Ḥilya, and several additional treatises and fascicles from which he extracted narrations.