al-Karīm, Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Yūsuf al-Qāḍī, Zakariyyā al-Sājī, ʿImrān ibn Mūsā ibn Mujāshiʿ al-Sikhtiyānī, and a large company besides.

Those who declared him reliable include Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī, al-Nasāʾī, and others.

As for the remark made about him by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khirāsh, it is not worth lending an ear to. He said, “People have spoken against him, yet he is truthful.”

I say: on the contrary, the scholars are unanimously agreed on accepting his narrations as authoritative proof.

He passed away in the month of Ramaḍān, in the year 234 AH.

A number of his elevated corroborative chains have come down to us.

Section

In that same era—the time of Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd—there were several notable figures; he was the foremost among them.

al-Shādhakūnī, who was the most retentive of them all;

al-Khuttalī, Abū al-Rabīʿ: a teacher of Muslim, trustworthy and well-known;

Abū al-Rabīʿ al-Mahrī, a close companion of Ibn Wahb—Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī transmitted from him;

the ḥāfiẓ Abū Dāwūd al-Yamāmī, one of the teachers of Abū Zurʿah and Abū Ḥātim, though not widely known;

Abū Aḥmad al-Rāzī al-Qazzāz: Ibn Abī Ḥātim narrated from him, deemed him reliable, and said, “He heard (ḥadīth) from Ibn ʿUyaynah and Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā.”

Abū Dāwūd al-Naysābūrī al-Khaffāf: one of Ibn Khuzaymah’s teachers, who narrates from ʿAbdullāh ibn Rajāʾ.