Sijistān as a whole; the city is walled, contains a magnificent congregational mosque, is traversed by a large river, and lies eighty-nine degrees east of the Fortunate Isles. The adjectival form derived from it is likewise “Sijzī.” Thus Abū ʿAwānah al-Isfarāʾīnī refers to Abū Dāwūd as “al-Sijzī,” and the same nisbah is borne by the foremost transmitter of our day, Abū al-Waqt al-Sijzī.
It has also been said—though the report is of no weight—that Abū Dāwūd came from a place called Sijistān, a village under the jurisdiction of Basra; Qāḍī Shams al-Dīn mentions this in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān⦗1⦘. In fact, when Abū Dāwūd first left his homeland he entered Baghdad at the age of eighteen, before ever seeing Basra, and only later travelled from Baghdad to Basra.
Abū ʿUbayd al-Ājurrī stated: “Abū Dāwūd died on the sixteenth of Shawwāl in the year 275 AH.”
I add: His brother Muḥammad ibn al-Ashʿath, slightly his senior, accompanied him on his journeys. He narrated from the pupils of Shuʿbah, and his nephew Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd transmitted from him. He died in middle age, some time before Abū Dāwūd.
118 – Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sulaymān ibn al-Ashʿath al-Sijistānī
The Imām, the erudite authority, the ḥadīth master, the Shaykh of Baghdad,