al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Faḍl al-Sulamī, al-Mursī, the Andalusian.

He was born in Murcia at the beginning of the year 570 AH, or a few days before that.

He studied the Muwaṭṭaʾ with the ḥadīth scholar Abū Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ḥajarī in 590 AH.

He also received instruction from ʿAbd al-Munʿim ibn al-Faras and others of his calibre. He performed the pilgrimage and journeyed to Iraq, Khurasan, Syria, and Egypt, making many trips both early and late in his life. Among those he heard from were Manṣūr al-Farāwī, al-Muʾayyad al-Ṭūsī, Zaynab al-Shaʿrīyah, ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad al-Harawī, and numerous others. While in Baghdad he attended the circles of the pupils of Qāḍī al-Marastān. He wrote, read, and assembled a large collection of precious books; whatever bounty Allah granted him he spent on acquiring volumes. He was richly endowed with knowledge, keen of understanding, and firm in his religious observance.

He transmitted al-Sunan al-Kabīr more than once on the authority of Manṣūr.

Those who narrated from him include Ibn al-Najjār, al-Muḥibb al-Ṭabarī, al-Dimyāṭī, the Ḥanbalī judge, the Mālikī judge Kamāl al-Dīn, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Fazārī the preacher, Abū al-Faḍl al-Irbilī, al-ʿImād ibn al-Bālisī, Muḥammad ibn al-Muhtār, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Maqdisī, al-Sharaf ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Shaykh, al-Shams Muḥammad ibn al-Tāj, Ibn Saʿd, Muḥammad ibn Niʿmah, Maḥmūd ibn al-Marātabī, ʿAlī al-Qaṣīrī, and many others.

Ibn al-Najjār said: “He arrived in 605 AH as a seeker of knowledge, where he heard extensively, studied jurisprudence and uṣūl, then travelled to Khurasan, returned by way of Syria, and thereafter performed the Hajj.”

I say: al-Irbilī al-Dhahabī heard from him the whole of al-Sunan al-Kabīr in 632 AH.