216 – Ibn Nuqtah, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Abī Bakr *

The Imām, scholar, precision ḥāfiẓ, indefatigable traveller, Muʿīn al-Dīn, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Abī Bakr ibn Shujāʿ ibn Abī Naṣr al-Baghdādī, the Ḥanbalī.

He was born after 570 AH.

His father was one of the ascetics, and so Abū Bakr devoted himself to ḥadīth: he collected narrations and authored works.

He heard ḥadīth from Yaḥyā ibn Bawsh, though he missed Ibn Kulayb; thereafter he continued his quest (1) in the year 600 AH and the years that followed.

Among his teachers were Abū Aḥmad ibn Sukaynah, Abū l-Fatḥ al-Mandāʾī, Ibn Ṭabarzad, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Jīlī, Ibn al-Akḍar, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Qubbayṭī, and many others.

In Isfahān he studied under ʿAfīfah al-Fārfāniyyah, Zāhir al-Thaqafī, al-Muʾayyad ibn al-Ikhwah, Asʿad ibn Rūḥ, Maḥmūd ibn Aḥmad al-Muḍarī, ʿĀʾishah bint Muʿammar, and others.

In Nīshāpūr he heard from Manṣūr al-Farāwī, al-Muʾayyad al-Ṭūsī, and Zaynab.

In Ḥarrān he received narrations from ʿAbd al-Qādir the ḥāfiẓ;

in Damascus from al-Kindī and Ibn al-Ḥarastānī;

in Aleppo from al-Iftikhār al-Hāshimī;

in Egypt from al-Ḥusayn ibn Abī l-Fakhr and ʿAbd al-Qawī ibn al-Jabbāb;

and on the frontier from Muḥammad ibn ʿImād, as well as at Damanhūr, Dunaysir, and Mecca.

He was reliable, possessed an excellent recitation and a fine hand, and was exact in what he transmitted; he had a dignified bearing