ibn al-Ḥajjāj ibn Muslim ibn Ward ibn Kawshādh al-Qushayrī (1), the Nīshāpūrī, compiler of the Ṣaḥīḥ. It appears that he was a freedman affiliated with the tribe of Qushayr.
It is said that he was born in 204 AH.
His first audition of ḥadith was in 218 AH, when he heard from Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Tamīmī. He performed the Pilgrimage in 220 AH while still beardless; during that journey he studied in Mecca under al-Qaʿnabī—his senior-most teacher—and in Kūfah he received narration from Aḥmad ibn Yūnus and a number of others.
He then hastened back to his homeland, but after some years—still before the age of thirty—he set out again in quest of knowledge.
He reported abundantly from ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd, though he did not cite him at all in his Ṣaḥīḥ.
He heard ḥadith in Iraq, the Two Sanctuaries, and Egypt.
A listing of his teachers, arranged alphabetically:
He narrated from: Ibrāhīm ibn Khālid al-Yashkurī; Ibrāhīm ibn Dīnār al-Tammār; Ibrāhīm ibn Ziyād Sablān; Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿīd al-Jawharī; Ibrāhīm ibn ʿArʿarah; Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm; Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar; Aḥmad ibn Janāb; Aḥmad ibn Jawwās; Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Khirāsh; Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd al-Ribāṭī; Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī; Aḥmad ibn Sinān; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Kurdī; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūnus; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Wahb; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdah; Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Awdī; Abū al-Jawzāʾ Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Nawfalī; Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar al-Wakīʿī; Aḥmad ibn ʿĪsā al-Tustarī; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; Aḥmad ibn al-Mundhir al-Qazzāz; Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ; Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Sulamī; Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh; and Isḥāq ibn ʿUmar.