and Muḥammad ibn Karrām al-Sijistānī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Bāshānī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥamzah al-Marwazī, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Khālid al-Marwazī, Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Marwazī, Maḥmūd ibn Wālān al-ʿAdanī, and others besides them.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥamzah said: “He used to reside in Baghdad; then he moved to Marw and settled in the village of Zarzam. He was distinguished and a ḥāfiẓ (hadith master).”
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Bāshānī said: “He is from the clan of ʿAbd Shams ibn Saʿd.”
Al-Nasāʾī said: “Thiqah, maʾmūn, ḥāfiẓ—that is, reliable, trustworthy, and a hadith master.”
Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said: “In former times he lived in Baghdad; afterward he relocated to Marw, and his ḥadith became famous there. He was truthful, precise, and a ḥāfiẓ.”
The ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdawayh ibn Sanjān al-Marwazī recounted: “I heard ʿAlī ibn Ḥujr say, ‘I left Iraq when I was thirty-three years old and said to myself, “If only I could live another thirty-three years so that I might transmit some of the knowledge I have gathered.” I have now lived those additional thirty-three, yet I still yearn for what I yearned for on the day I departed Iraq.’”
I say: He was speaking in round numbers; the man did not reach ninety-nine.
The ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Aʿyan said: “The shaykhs of Khurāsān are three: Qutaybah, ʿAlī ibn Ḥujr, and Muḥammad ibn Mihrān al-Rāzī.
“Its foremost men are four: ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Samarkandī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī—before the later controversy—Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, and Abū Zurʿah.”