56 – Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī al-Ẓāhirī,
that erudite, consummate polymath—Abu Bakr—was a man whose keen intelligence became proverbial. He is the author of al-Zahrah on refined conduct and poetry, in addition to a work on the laws of inheritance and other writings.

He transmitted ḥadith from his father, ʿAbbās al-Dūrī, Abu Qilābah al-Raqāshī, Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah, Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā al-Madāʾinī, and their peers. He possessed thorough expertise in ḥadith and in the statements of the Companions, exercising independent reasoning and following no one blindly.

Among those who related from him were Nifṭawayh, the judge Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, and others. He died before reaching middle age and left only a small body of transmissions.

After his father’s death he assumed the seat of legal verdicts, engaging in debate with Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn Surayj almost without interruption.

Qāḍī Abū al-Ḥasan al-Dāʾūdī recounts: When Abu Bakr ibn Dāwūd took up issuing fatwas after his father, people deemed him too young, so they planted someone to ask him about the legal threshold of intoxication—when exactly is a person to be considered drunk?

He answered, “When cares have departed from him (1) and he blurts out the secret he had kept concealed.”