al-Ḥarrānī, a merchant and frequent traveller.
He journeyed to Egypt, Iraq, and Khurasan; he wrote, compiled, and taught. He composed verse, cultivated belles-lettres, and was known for an honourable character.
He transmitted hadith from Ismaʿil ibn al-Samarqandi—his senior teacher—Abu Bakr ibn al-Zaghuni, Saʿid ibn al-Bannaʾ, Abu al-Naḍr al-Fami, Salim ibn ʿAbd Allah al-ʿUmari, ʿAbd al-Salam ibn Aḥmad al-Iskaf, Ibn Rifāʿa, al-Silafi, Ibn al-Baṭṭī, and a host of others.
Narrations from him were taken by ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUlaymi, his nephew Muḥammad ibn ʿImād, al-Tāj ibn Abī Jaʿfar, and several others. He likewise granted an ijāzah to Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Khayr.
His contribution to the science of hadith was of high quality.
Ibn al-Najjār states: “I read, in Ḥammād al-Ḥarrānī’s own handwriting: ‘I was born sixty days into the year 511 AH, and I passed away in Harran in Dhu’l-Ḥijjah of 598 AH.’”
In that same year died: Aḥmad ibn Tazmash al-Khayyāṭ; the jurist Asʿad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Ghānim al-Thaqafī, brother of Zāhir, at the age of eighty-three; Abu Ṭāhir al-Khushūʿī; the noble hadith scholar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-ʿAbbāsī, while still a young man; the emir Saʿd ibn Ṭāhir al-Muzdaqānī; Abu Baḥr Ṣafwān ibn Idrīs al-Mursī, the scribe—one of the leading masters of eloquence; ʿAbd Allah ibn Abī al-Majd al-Ḥarbī, transmitter of the Musnad; the qāḍī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Aḥmad al-ʿUmarī, a little over eighty; and Zayn al-Qudāt ʿAbd—