and Abū al-Walīd. He then travelled on to Syria and Egypt, returned to Iraq, and afterwards set off with his son Abū Bakr to visit the rest of the leading scholars. He reached Nīshāpūr and had his son audition ḥadith from Isḥāq ibn Manṣūr, after which he went back to Sijistān. There he inspected his estates, then returned to Basra and made it his permanent home.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Zāhid al-Iṣbahānī narrated to us; Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd narrated to us; my father narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr al-Rāzī narrated to us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qays related to us, from Ḥammād ibn Salamah, from Abū al-ʿUsharāʾ al-Dārimī, from his father:

(The Prophet ﷺ was asked about al-ʿAtīrah, and he approved of it.) (1)

It was said that Aḥmad had written down ḥadith from this narrator’s father, so I mentioned that to him and he replied, “Yes.”

I asked, “How did that come about?”

He answered, “One day we were reviewing the traditions of Abū al-ʿUsharāʾ. Aḥmad said, ‘I know only three ḥadiths from him, and no one reports from him except Ḥammād: the report about the labbah (2) and the report, ‘I saw a turban on Abū al-ʿUsharāʾ.’ I conveyed this to Aḥmad, and he said, ‘Dictate it to me.’”

He then said, “Muḥammad ibn Abī Samīnah has, in the corpus of Abū Dāwūd, a singular narration.”

So he asked me about it, and Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Abī Samīnah wrote it down from me.

Al-Ḥākim said: Abū Ḥātim ibn Ḥibbān informed us, saying: I heard Ibn Abī Dāwūd say, “Among the ḥadith scholars I met, none had a better memory for ḥadith or a larger collection than Ibn Maʿīn; none was more scrupulous or more versed in the legal understanding of ḥadith than Aḥmad; and the most knowledgeable about its hidden defects was ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī. I also saw Isḥāq—despite his remarkable memory and expertise—placing Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal ahead of himself and acknowledging his superiority.”