He excelled in this discipline, authoring and compiling widely, and he surpassed all the leading ḥuffāẓ in detecting hidden defects in hadith. It is said that his written works reached two hundred separate titles.
Those who transmitted from him include: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; Abū Yaḥyā Ṣāʿiqah; al-Zaʿfarānī; Abū Bakr al-Ṣāghānī; Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Bukhārī; Abū Ḥātim; Ḥanbal ibn Isḥāq; Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Naḍr; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Barāʾ; al-Ḥasan ibn Shabīb al-Maʿmarī; his son, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAlī; al-Bukhārī—who narrated from him in great quantity—Abū Dāwūd; Ḥumayd ibn Zanǧūyah; Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad Jazara; ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿUthmān al-ʿUthmānī; Hilāl ibn al-ʿAlāʾ; al-Ḥasan al-Bazzār; Abū Dāwūd al-Ḥarrānī; Ismāʿīl the judge; Abū Muslim al-Kajji; ʿAlī ibn Ghālib al-Batlihī (1); Abū Khalīfa al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥubāb; Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar, the Imam’s son, of Damietta; Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Bāghandī; Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī; and ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb al-Kātib—the last person to relate from him.
A number of his own teachers also narrated from him; among them was Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, and this scribe lived on one hundred and twenty-eight years after Sufyān.
ʿAlī was born in the year 161 AH, according to ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Naḍr, and his birthplace was Basra.
Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī said: “Ibn al-Madīnī was a towering authority among the people in the knowledge of hadith and its hidden defects.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal never referred to him by name; he would only address him by his kunyah out of reverence—I never heard Aḥmad call him by his given name at all.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām al-Tamīmī informed us, on the authority of Zaynab bint Abī al-Qāsim