any town in which Baqīʿ was already residing ever have to send someone from there to travel all the way over here (1)?!

Ṭāhir ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Andalusī said: “I carried with me a fascicle of the Musnad of Baqīʿ ibn Makhlad to the East and showed it to Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣāʾigh. He exclaimed, ‘This man has drawn only from an ocean!’ and he was amazed at the vastness of his learning.

Ibrāhīm ibn Ḥayyūn relates from Baqīʿ ibn Makhlad: ‘When I returned from Iraq, Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr seated me by his side and heard seven hadiths from me.’

Abū al-Walīd ibn al-Faraḍī said in his Tārīkh: ‘Baqīʿ ibn Makhlad filled al-Andalus with hadith. His Andalusian colleagues—Aḥmad ibn Khālid (2), Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥārith, and Abū Zayd—objected to the books of juristic disagreement and the rarities of hadith that he had introduced. They instigated the ruler against him and tried to frighten him through the authorities. But Allah granted him the upper hand over them and protected him from their harm, so he disseminated hadith and read his transmissions aloud to the people (3).

‘Then Ibn Waḍḍāḥ followed his lead, and al-Andalus became a land of hadith and isnād (4).’

Among the works unique to him—brought in by no one else—were the complete Musannaf of Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah; the entire Kitāb al-Fiqh of al-Shāfiʿī, that is, al-Umm; Khalīfah’s History (Tārīkh); Khalīfah’s Classes (Ṭabaqāt); and the book Sīrat ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz by Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dawraqī. No one possessed anything comparable to his Musnad.

He was devout, outstanding, and ascetic, and on more than one occasion his supplications were manifestly answered.