Hajjāj ibn al-Shāʿir, and Muḥammad ibn Ḥassān al-Azraq, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Zanjuyah, Ibrāhīm al-Muzanī, al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān the muezzin, Bahr ibn Naṣr, Saʿdān ibn Naṣr, al-Ramādī, Abū Zurʿa, Ibn Wārah, and a host of scholars of their generation, along with many who came after them in the Hijaz, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, Syria, the Jazīrah, and the mountain regions. He was an ocean that no bucket could ever muddy.

Those who transmitted from him include: Ibn ʿAdī, Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Tamīmī, the judge Yūsuf al-Mayanajī ⦗1⦘, Abū Shaykh Ibn Ḥayyān, Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Mardak, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Baṣīr al-Rāzī, ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Asad the jurist, Abū ʿAlī Ḥamd ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Aṣbahānī, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Yazdād and his brother Aḥmad, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Naṣr Ābādī, Abū Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Rāzī, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Qaṣṣār, and many others besides them.

Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīlī said, “Abū Muḥammad absorbed the knowledge of his father and of Abū Zurʿa; he was an ocean in the sciences and in the appraisal of transmitters. He authored works on jurisprudence and on the disputes of the Companions, the Successors, and the scholars of the various regions. He was an ascetic, counted among the abdāl ⦗2⦘.”

I (the author) say: He produced a valuable book on jarḥ wa-taʿdīl (narrator criticism and accreditation) in four volumes; a massive volume entitled Refutation of the Jahmiyyah, from which I have made selections; and a large Tafsīr in several volumes, consisting mainly of transmitted reports with their chains of transmission. It ranks among the finest commentaries.

The ḥāfiẓ Yaḥyā ibn Manda said, “Ibn Abī Ḥātim compiled the Musnad in one thousand—”