50 – al-Dubaithī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAlī

He was an Imām, a reliable scholar and ḥāfiẓ, Shaykh of the Qur’an reciters and an unimpeachable authority among the hadith specialists: Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad, son of Abū al-Maʿālī Saʿīd, son of Yaḥyā, son of ʿAlī ibn Ḥajjāj al-Dubaithī—later known as al-Wāsiṭī—a Shāfiʿī whose uprightness was formally endorsed and who authored numerous works.

He was born in 558 AH.

He received hadith from Abū Ṭālib al-Kattānī, Hibat Allāh ibn Qassām, and several other teachers in Wāsiṭ after 570 AH.

He mastered the ten canonical Qur’anic readings under Khaṭīb Shāfiyā (1) and Ibn al-Bāqillānī, both of whom had studied with Abū al-ʿIzz al-Qalānsī.

In Baghdad he heard hadith from Abū al-Fath ibn Shātil, ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn al-Farāwī while the latter was on pilgrimage, Naṣr Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qazzāz, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ ibn ʿAqīl, and others of their rank.

So diligent was he in collecting chains of transmission that he even narrated from the pupils of Abū al-Waqt and of Abū al-Fath ibn al-Baṭṭī.

He recited the various readings to a number of teachers and studied jurisprudence under Abū al-Ḥasan al-Būqī.

He applied himself to Arabic grammar, uṣūl, and the sciences of juridical debate; devoted himself wholeheartedly to hadith, writing down both the higher and the lower isnāds; compiled a large History of Wāsiṭ (2); produced a supplement to Ibn al-Samʿānī’s Supplement to al-Khaṭīb’s History of Baghdad; prepared an alphabetical biographical dictionary (Muʿjam) of his own teachers; and extracted hadith collections for more than one scholar.

He served as supervisor of the charitable endowments and was counted among the leading certifying notaries (ʿudūl). Later he requested to be relieved of that duty, wearied by its demands, for in Baghdad the office of ʿadāla was an official post,