and in Egypt, from Ismaʿil ibn Yasin and a number of others;
and in Damascus, from Ismaʿil al-Janzawi and al-Khushuʿi.

I once saw a sound ijazah—a small slip of parchment—bearing this ʿAbd al-Khaliq’s name and issued by Wajih al-Shahhami, ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Farawi, ʿAbd al-Khaliq ibn Zahir, Abu al-Asʿad al-Qushayri, al-Husayn ibn ʿAli al-Shahhami, Shahradar ibn Shirawayh, ʿAbd al-Khaliq al-Yusufi, Nasr ibn Nasr al-ʿUkbari, Hibat Allah ibn Ukht al-Tawil, Mawhub ibn al-Jawaliqi, ʿAbd al-Malik al-Karukhi, and others of their generation. At the time I thought this improbable and paid the matter little heed; we therefore withheld judgment about it.

Ibn al-Hajib said: “I asked the hadith master al-Diyaʾ about him, and he replied, ‘We accompanied him at auditions in Baghdad and saw nothing from him but good, and it reached us that he is both a jurist and a hadith scholar.’ ”

Another observer said: “He was a sharp debater, versatile, and possessed a wealth of material.”

The hadith master ʿIzz al-Din al-Sharif (1) stated: “He used to relate that he was born in the year 537 AH, and that several scholars granted him written authorization, among them Abu ʾl-Fath al-Karukhi.”

I add: hesitation remains concerning this authorization—was it truly his, or did it belong to a brother of his with the same name who died long ago? I have seen our teachers, such as al-Dimyati and Ibn al-Zahiri, travel to him, hear from him his narrations from Ibn Shatil and others, and rely on this very authorization. I even saw our shaykh Ibn al-Zahiri read Sunan Abu ʿIsa (al-Tirmidhi) to him; had he not regarded the authorization as sound, he would never have put himself to such trouble.

Al-Dimyati also said that he lived past one hundred years, adding, “He was a knowledgeable jurist.”

He then vocalized the name “al-Nishtibri” with a kasrah on its first and third letters. Ibn al-Najjar said: “It has reached me that he claimed authorization from Mawhub ibn al-Jawaliqi, al-Karukhi, and a number of others, and he transmitted….”