Khurasan, and in the Hijaz and Iraq, Egypt and Syria, Isfahan and Fars.

He was an ocean of learning; indeed, some people even judged him superior to his own father.

He composed al-Sunan, al-Maṣāḥif, Sharīʿat al-Maqāriʾ, al-Nāsikh wa-l-Mansūkh, al-Baʿth, and a number of other works.

A great many scholars narrated from him, among them: Ibn Ḥibbān, Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, Abū ʿUmar Ibn Ḥayyawah, Ibn al-Muẓaffar, Abū Ḥafṣ Ibn Shāhīn, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Dāraqutnī, ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī the minister, Ibn al-Muqriʾ, Abū al-Qāsim Ibn Ḥabābah, Abū Ṭāhir al-Mukhlis, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Zunbūr the copyist, Abū Muslim Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Kātib, and others.

He used to say, “I entered Kūfah with only one dirham. With it I bought thirty mudd of fava beans (1). I would eat from them while writing hadith from Abū Saʿīd al-Ashajj, and before the beans were finished I had written thirty thousand reports from him, some with broken chains and others mursal (2).”

Abū Bakr ibn Shādhān related: “When Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd came to Sijistān, the people asked him to narrate hadith to them, but he said, ‘I have no manuscript with me.’

“They exclaimed, ‘Ibn Abī Dāwūd—and no book?!’

“He continued, ‘They provoked me, so I dictated to them from memory thirty thousand hadiths. When I returned to Baghdad, the Baghdadis said, “He went to Sijistān and made sport of them.” They then formed a party (3) and hired it for six dinars to travel back to Sijistān so that I could prepare the transcript for them. The copy was written, and it was brought back.’”