Abī Ṭālib al-Baghdādī, a Qur’an reciter, manuscript copyist, and librarian.
His birth: sometime after 550 AH (1).
He learned the various canonical readings under Ibn ʿAsākir al-Baṭāʾiḥī, Abū al-Ḥārith Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd al-ʿAskarī, Yaʿqūb al-Ḥarbī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Qāṣṣ, and others.
Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Abī al-Jaysh recited the readings to him.
He also heard ḥadith from Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Raḥabī, Khadīja al-Nahrawāniyya, Shuhda al-Ibriyya, and several others.
Among those who transmitted from him were al-Rashīd Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Qāsim and others.
By way of written authorization, he was narrated by Fāṭima bint Sulaymān, the Qāḍī, Ibn Saʿd, and a number of scholars besides.
He heard the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik in the transmission of al-Qaʿnabī from Shuhda, as well as Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Ājurri’s Muḥāsabat al-Nafs (Self-Scrutiny) and al-Ghurabāʾ (The Strangers), together with the Six Sessions of Ibn al-Bakhtarī.
Al-Mustanṣir appointed him custodian of his library. He was upright, trustworthy, an exemplary imam—righteous, virtuous, and devout. He possessed an imposing presence and remarkable dignity, and people benefited greatly from him.