He transmitted hadith from al-Shafiʿi, ʿAli ibn Maʿbad ibn Shaddad, Nuʿaym ibn Hammad, and others.
Although his narrations are few, he was nonetheless a towering authority in jurisprudence.
Those who reported from him include: the “Imam of the Imams” Abu Bakr ibn Khuzaymah; Abu al-Hasan ibn Jawsa; Abu Bakr ibn Ziyad al-Naysaburi; Abu Jaʿfar al-Tahawi; Abu Nuʿaym ibn ʿAdi; ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Abi Hatim; Abu al-Fawaris ibn al-Sabuni; and many scholars from both East and West.
His Mukhtasar (abridgement) on jurisprudence spread throughout the lands, and several leading scholars composed commentaries on it. People even used to say: “A maiden’s trousseau would not be complete without a copy of al-Muzani’s Mukhtasar.”
ʿUmar ibn al-Qawwās informed us, Zayd ibn al-Hasan wrote to us, Abu al-Hasan ibn ʿAbd al-Salam informed us, and the jurist Abu Ishaq narrated: “As for al-Shafiʿi—may Allah have mercy on him—his fiqh passed to his disciples, among them Abu Ibrahim Ismaʿil ibn Yahya ibn Ismaʿil ibn ʿAmr ibn Ishaq al-Muzani, who died in Egypt in 264 AH.”
He went on to say: “Al-Muzani was an ascetic, a scholar, a disputant, a formidable debater, a diver into subtle meanings. He authored many works—al-Jamiʿ al-Kabir, al-Jamiʿ al-Saghir, al-Manthur, al-Masaʾil al-Muʿtabara, al-Targhib fi al-ʿIlm, and the Book of al-Wathāʾiq (1).”
Al-Shafiʿi declared, “Al-Muzani is the champion of my school.”
I say: We have been told that whenever al-Muzani finished fair-copying an issue and deposited it … (2)