and Khālid ibn Yazīd al-Muqriʾ, who had recited the Qur’an to Ḥamzah.

In Mecca he heard from: Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muqriʾ, Khallād ibn Yaḥyā, Ḥassān ibn Ḥassān al-Baṣrī, Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Azraqī, and al-Ḥumaydī.

In Medina he heard from: ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Uwaysī, Ayyūb ibn Sulaymān ibn Bilāl, and Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways.

In Egypt: Saʿīd ibn Abī Maryam, Aḥmad ibn Ishkāb, ʿAbd Allah ibn Yūsuf, Aṣbagh, and several others.

In Greater Syria: Abū al-Yamān, Ādam ibn Abī Iyās, ʿAlī ibn ʿAyyāsh, and Bishr ibn Shuʿayb.

He also heard from: Abū al-Mughīrah ʿAbd al-Quddūs, Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Wahbī, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Firyābī, Abū Mushir, and many more besides.

His copyist, Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥātim, related: “I heard him say, ‘When I entered Balkh, they asked me to dictate a hadith for each of the scholars whose narrations I had written down, so I dictated one thousand hadiths from one thousand men from whom I had taken transmission.’

He added—and I heard this one month before his death—‘I have written down hadith from one thousand and eighty men; every single one of them was a hadith scholar, and they all used to say: Faith is word and deed; it increases and decreases (1).’”

I say: The most senior of his teachers—those who narrated to him on the authority of the Successors—were: Abū ʿĀṣim,