and Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb, Surayj ibn al-Nuʿmān, ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd, Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ, Khalaf ibn Hishām, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, Bundār, and many others.
A great many scholars transmitted ḥadith from him, among them: Abū Muḥammad Ibn Saʿid, Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-Sammāk, Abū Bakr al-Najjād, Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī, ʿUmar ibn Jaʿfar al-Khuttulī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar al-Qaṭīʿī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-ʿAbbās—the father of al-Mukhlis—Sulaymān ibn Isḥāq al-Jallāb, Muḥammad ibn Makhlad al-ʿAṭṭār, Jaʿfar al-Khuldī, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Anbārī, Abū Baḥr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Barbahārī, and their peers.
Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said: “He was an imam in knowledge, a foremost exemplar of asceticism, thoroughly versed in fiqh, keen-sighted in legal rulings, a ḥadith memoriser who distinguished hidden defects, a master of adab, encyclopaedic in the Arabic language. He authored Gharīb al-Ḥadīth and many other works, and his family was originally from Marw (1).”
Al-Mukhlis narrated from his father, who said: “Ismāʿīl the judge yearned to meet Ibrāhīm. One day they met and reviewed knowledge together. When they parted, Ibrāhīm was asked about Ismāʿīl. He replied, ‘Ismāʿīl is like a mountain into which a soul has been breathed.’ In turn, Ismāʿīl said, ‘I have never seen anyone comparable to Ibrāhīm.’”
I say: This Ismāʿīl is Ibn Isḥāq al-Qāḍī, the scholar of Iraq.
It is related that when Abū Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī entered upon Ismāʿīl the judge, Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Qāḍī hastened to his sandals, picked them up, and wiped the dust from them. Abū Isḥāq prayed for him, saying, “May Allah ennoble you in this world and the next.” When Abū ʿUmar died, he was seen in—