Bakr ibn Abī ʿAmr, the ḥāfiẓ of Bukhara, say:

“The reason for Abū ʿAbd Allah’s estrangement was that Khālid ibn Aḥmad al-Dhuhli, the governor and Tahirid deputy in Bukhara, asked him to come to his residence and read al-Jāmiʿ and al-Tārīkh to his children. He refused to attend, so the governor wrote again, requesting that he at least hold a private session for his children alone. He again declined and said, ‘I do not single anyone out.’

The governor then enlisted Ḥuraith ibn Abī al-Waraqāʾ and others, who criticized his doctrine and expelled him from the city. He invoked Allah against them, and scarcely a month had passed before an order arrived from the Tahirids that Khālid himself be denounced in the town; he was paraded through the streets on a jenny.

As for Ḥuraith, he was afflicted in his own household and met with trials too bitter to describe.

And another man was tried through his children, and Allah showed him calamities among them. (1)

Al-Ḥākim said: Khalaf ibn Muḥammad related to us; Sahl ibn Shādhwayh related to us, saying: “Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl lived in the alley of al-Dahqān. A group of people would visit him, displaying the hallmarks of the people of ḥadith—pronouncing the iqāma in single phrases, raising the hands in prayer, and the like.

Ḥuraith ibn Abī al-Waraqāʾ and others said, ‘This man is a trouble-maker; he is spoiling our city. Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā expelled him from Nīshāpūr, and he is the leading scholar of the people of ḥadith.’ They used Ibn Yaḥyā’s action as proof against him and sought the help of the authorities to banish him from the town, and so he was expelled.

Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl was scrupulously pious; he avoided the rulers and never visited them.”

Al-Ḥākim also said: I heard Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Wāṣil al-Bīkandī—I heard my father say: “Allah favored us by bringing Abū ʿAbd Allah to us and allowing him to stay among us until we were able to hear these books from him; otherwise, who could have reached him—and his residence—in these regions? Firabr…”