A great many narrators took from him, among them: Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī; Abū Ḥātim; Ibrāhīm ibn Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī; Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā; Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAmr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim; Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad Jazara; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥaḍramī, known as Muṭayyin; Ibrāhīm ibn Maʿqil al-Nasafī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nājiya; Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Khuzaymah; ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Bujayr; Abū Quraysh Muḥammad ibn Jumʿah; Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid; Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Firabrī, the principal transmitter of the Ṣaḥīḥ; Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad Mizbazdah; Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd; al-Ḥusayn and al-Qāsim, the two sons of al-Maḥāmilī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ashqar; Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān ibn Fāris; Maḥmūd ibn ʿAnbar al-Nasafī; and throngs beyond reckoning.
Muslim also narrated from him, though not in his Ṣaḥīḥ.
It has been claimed that al-Nasāʾī cited him in the “Book of Fasting” of his Sunan, but that is not sound (1). Nonetheless, in his work al-Kunā, al-Nasāʾī does report several items from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Khaffāf on the authority of al-Bukhārī.
Our teacher Abū al-Ḥajjāj al-Mizzī, as is his practice, arranged the shaykhs of al-Bukhārī and his disciples alphabetically in a muʿjam, and he listed many others besides those I have mentioned.
(1) In the margin of the base manuscript we read: “Al-Nasai actually transmitted from him. This occurs in Ibn Mandah’s Kitab al-Iman: ‘Hamzah related to us, al-Nasai related to us, Muhammad b. Ismail al-Bukhari related to us …’. A similar notice appears in the chapter on fasting, where al-Nasai says: ‘Muhammad b. Ismail related to us, Hafs b. Umar b. al-Harith related to us, from Hammad, the hadith “The Messenger of Allah never uttered a curse.”’
Hamzah al-Kinani, al-Hasan b. al-Khadr al-Asyuti and Ibn Haywayh al-Naysaburi all cite the chain from al-Nasai in this form.
In al-Suri’s autograph copy the isnad reads: ‘from Ibn al-Nahhas, from Hamzah al-Kinani, from al-Nasai—Muhammad b. Ismail, that is Abu Bakr al-Tabarani, related to us.’
Ibn al-Sunni alone records it as: ‘Muhammad b. Ismail al-Bukhari related to us.’
Al-Muzani comments: ‘We have found nothing else like this in al-Nasai’s work; if Ibn al-Sunni preserved the wording accurately, he must have appended the name “al-Bukhari” on the assumption that this was the famous Bukhari.’
Al-Nasai, however, transmits extensively from another Muhammad b. Ismail b. Ibrahim—namely Ibn Ulayyah; in his book al-Kuna he reproduces, through Abd Allah b. Ahmad al-Khafaf, a number of hadiths from this “Bukhari”.
This convergence of data indicates that al-Nasai never actually met Imam al-Bukhari. Allah knows best.