He also received hadith from his own father, the imam Abū ʿAlī; from Abū Bakr ibn al-Jadd; from Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Zarqūn; from Abū al-Qāsim ibn Hubaysh; and from scholars of their rank. He transmitted copiously and with great accuracy.

Authorization (ijāza) was further granted to him by Abū Marwān ibn Quzmān, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Hudhayl, and a group of others, and he devoted himself wholeheartedly to this discipline.

Al-Abbār ⦗1⦘ said: “He possessed complete mastery of the science of hadith, keen insight into its finer points, exactitude, and an outstanding memory for the names of narrators; he surpassed his peers in all of that. He was also versed in the canonical readings of the Qur’an and shared in the sciences of Arabic; people even debated him over Kitāb Sībawayh.”

He inherited his father’s brilliance in hadith, and only a few of his contemporaries could rival him in memorization and in the principles of narrator criticism and accreditation (al-jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl).

Abū Muḥammad ibn Ḥawṭ Allāh said: “The hadith scholars in al-Andalus are three: Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Qurṭubī and Abū al-Rabīʿ ibn Sālim,” then he fell silent about the third, and people presumed he meant himself.

I say: Abū al-Qāsim al-Mallāḥī, the ḥāfiẓ, was in no way inferior to them. Ibn al-Qurṭubī enjoyed tremendous respect, both among the elite and the common folk; people studied under him and benefited from his knowledge.

He passed away in Málaga, while serving as its preacher, in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir ⦗2⦘ of the year 611 AH.