al-Susi, from ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Zayd, from al-Hasan, who said, “He put it on at the hand of Kumayl ibn Ziyad, who had received it from ‘Ali—may Allah honor his face.”
I said, “These chains are dense, pitch-black darkness—how strikingly they call to mind sheer fabrication!”
Ibn al-Fuwati adds: “I read in the Life of al-Bakharzi by our shaykh Minhaj al-Din al-Nasafi—himself a man refined in conduct—that he wrote:
‘The shaykh adhered to hadith in both fundamentals and subsidiary rulings. He never concerned himself with almanacs or medicine; indeed, whenever a remedy was prescribed for him he would disregard it, following the sunnah (1). His way was free of affectation. In knowledge and excellence he was like a swelling sea, and in truth the pride of the early and later generations. He possessed majesty and esteem, and his renown spread among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Through his resolve the science of tradition became renowned across Transoxiana and Turkistan, whereas the prevailing scholarship there had been mere dialectics, polemics over disputed matters, and the neglect of practice. He made the lights of the prophetic reports shine in those lands.
He was born in Bakharz, a district between Nishapur and Herat whose chief town is Malin. He kept company with Najm al-Din al-Kubra, Bahaʾ al-Din al-Salamihi, Taj al-Din Mahmud al-Ashnahi, Saʿd al-Sarram al-Harawi, and Mukhtar al-Harawi, and he performed the pilgrimage while still a youth.
He then entered Baghdad a second time and studied with al-Suhrawardi; in Khurasan he studied under al-Muʾayyad al-Tusi and Fadl Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Nuqani. Thereafter he addressed the people of Dahistan, and he read with the preacher Jalal al-Din, son of Shaykh al-Islam Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani, the book al-Hidayah in jurisprudence, one of his father’s works.
Later he reached Khwarazm, and in Bukhara he studied with al-Mahbubi, al-Kardari, and Abu Rashid al-Isbahani.
When the Tatars devastated Bukhara and other cities, Najm al-Din al-Kubra instructed his disciples