in the science of sound and weak ḥadith; my eyes have never seen anyone like him.
ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥājib said: “Our shaykh al-Ḍiyāʾ was the foremost scholar of his time, a class unto himself in knowledge, memorization, reliability, and piety—one of the truly godly scholars—and I am far too insignificant to describe him properly.”
I say: A great many people narrated from him. Among them were Ibn Nuqtah, Ibn al-Najjar, Sayf al-Dīn Ibn al-Majd, Ibn al-Azhar al-Ṣarīfīnī, Zakiyy al-Dīn al-Barzālī, Majd al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḥulwāniyyah, Sharaf al-Dīn Ibn al-Nābulusī, and his two nephews: the shaykh Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn al-Bukhārī and the shaykh Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Kamāl ʿAbd al-Raḥīm; the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn al-Ẓāhirī; Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ḥāzim; al-ʿIzz ibn al-Farrāʾ; Abū Jaʿfar Ibn al-Mawāzīnī; Najm al-Dīn Mūsā al-Shaqrāwī; Judge Taqī al-Dīn Sulaymān ibn Ḥamzah—together with his brothers Muḥammad and Dāwūd; Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Khabbāz; ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥimsī; Sālim ibn Abī al-Hayjāʾ the judge; Muḥammad ibn Khaṭīb Bayt al-Abbār; Abū ʿAlī Ibn al-Khallāl; ʿAlī ibn Baqāʾ the instructor; Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn Jaʿwān; ʿĪsā ibn Maʿālī al-Simsār; ʿĪsā ibn Abī Muḥammad al-ʿAṭṭār; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī al-Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī; Zaynab bint ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Raḍī; and many others besides.
The ḥāfiẓ Muḥibb al-Dīn Ibn al-Najjar states in his History: “Abū ʿAbd Allāh copied manuscripts in his own hand, collated the principal texts, and we heard a large body of material from him, both by his reading and by ours. He then travelled to Isfahan and there heard ḥadith from Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṣaydilānī and from a group of Fāṭimah al-Jūzdāniyyah’s students.
“He also spent a period in Herat and Marw, writing the major books with his own pen. With lofty aspiration, diligence, strenuous effort, critical verification, and precision he procured a number of copies. I took ḥadith from him in Baghdad, Nishapur, and Damascus. He is a ḥāfiẓ: exact, firmly reliable, truthful, noble, authoritative—a scholar…”