The ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr al-Aʿyan was once asked, “Whose memorisation is stronger: Abū Masʿūd al-Rāzī or Sulaymān al-Shādhakūnī?”
He answered, “In the musnad (fully connected) reports, Abū Masʿūd; in the munqaṭiʿ (interrupted) reports, al-Shādhakūnī.”
Among Abū Masʿūd’s writings is the book al-Ahādīth al-Afrād (Singular Reports), which Karīmah al-Qurashiyyah (2) transmitted by formal authorisation.
He passed away in Shaʿbān of the year 258 AH, having reached almost eighty years of age—may Allah have mercy on him.
Those who also died in that same year include: the ḥāfiẓ Aḥmad ibn Sinān al-Qaṭṭān, the muḥaddith of Wāsiṭ; Muḥammad ibn Sanjar al-Jurjānī, compiler of the Musnad in Egypt; Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī, the ḥāfiẓ and scholar of Khurāsān; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zanjūyah, the ḥāfiẓ of Baghdad; the muḥaddith Aḥmad ibn Budayl al-Kūfī, judge of Hamadhān; Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ al-Sulamī, the muḥaddith of Naysābūr; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān; the muḥaddith Hārūn ibn Isḥāq al-Hamdānī al-Kūfī; the reliable ʿAbdah ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣaffār; Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ḥassānī; the muḥaddith Ḥafṣ ibn ʿAmr al-Rabbālī (3); al-ʿAbbās ibn Yazīd al-Baḥrānī, the muḥaddith; Yaḥyā ibn Muʿādh al-Rāzī, shaykh of the Sufis; Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Abī Madhʿūr, the muḥaddith; Abū ʿUbaydah ibn Abī al-Safar al-Kūfī; and the senior judge Jaʿfar ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Hāshimī,