of the dawn prayer, he called me over, recited this hadith to me, and singled me out for it, withholding it from my companions. (1)

Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Sharqī said: Abū al-Azhar narrated to us, saying, “ʿAbd al-Razzaq would go out to a village, so I followed after him. When he saw me hurrying along, he said, ‘Come here,’ seated me behind him on the mule, and then said, ‘Shall I inform you of a singular hadith?’ I replied, ‘Yes indeed.’ He then conveyed the hadith to me,” and he mentioned it.

He went on, “When I returned to Baghdad, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn and the others repudiated it, so I swore that I would never relate it again until I had given a dirham in charity.”

Al-Dāraqutnī said, “The author of the Ṣaḥīḥ has transmitted reports from narrators inferior to Abū al-Azhar.”

It is also related from Abū Ḥāmid ibn al-Sharqī that he said, “Abū al-Azhar possessed narrations from certain shaykhs that Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā did not have from them—namely: Ibn Numayr, Abū Ḍamrah, Ibn Abī Fudayk, Zayd ibn Ḥubbāb, Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, and Muḥammad ibn Bishr.”

Al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Qabbānī said, “Abū al-Azhar died in the year 263 AH.”

Aḥmad ibn Sayyār states in his History, “He died at the beginning of the year 261 AH.”

I (al-Ḥākim) say: I affirm the year 263.

In that same year there also died: Aḥmad ibn Ḥarb al-Ṭāʾī of Mosul; al-Ḥasan ibn Abī Rabīʿ al-Jurjānī; the ḥadith scholar Muʿāwiyah ibn Ṣāliḥ, a pupil of Ibn Maʿīn; and the Imām