in the year 184 AH, when he was twenty-three years old.
Muḥammad ibn Nuʿaym said: I heard Isḥāq al-Ḥanẓalī remark, “I enter the bathhouse an old man and come out a youth.”
Al-Ḥākim said: In our view, Isḥāq’s disciples fall into three tiers.
The first tier consists of: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Saʿdī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-ʿAbdī, Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Sulamī, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-ʿAfsī, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan al-Dārabjirdī, Ḥāmid ibn Abī Ḥāmid the Qur’an-reciter, Khushnām ibn al-Ṣiddīq, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Farrāʾ, and Yaḥyā ibn al-Dhuhlī.
The second tier includes Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj … and he went on to name several others.
The third tier—the last of them—is Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj.
Ḥarb al-Karmānī said: I asked Isḥāq about the verse, “There is no private conversation among three but that He is the fourth of them” (Q 58:7). How do you interpret it?
He replied, “Wherever you are, He is nearer to you than your jugular vein, yet He is distinct and apart from His creation. The clearest proof of this is His statement, ‘The Most Compassionate rose over the Throne’ (Q 20:5).”
Abū Bakr al-Marwazī related: Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣabbaḥ al-Naysābūrī narrated to us, saying: Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd al-Khafāf narrated to us; he reported that Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh said, “There is ijmāʿ (consensus) among the scholars that He—exalted be He—rose over the Throne, while knowing everything even in the lowest reaches of the seventh earth.”
Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād said: “If you see a man from Khurāsān speaking against Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, suspect his religion.”
And Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ al-Saʿdī—the teacher of Ibn ʿAdī—said: “I heard Aḥmad ibn…"