as well as al-Jahdari, ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Asmaʾ and the rest of their cohort. He even reached the tier of Abu Ḥatim al-Razi and al-Bukhari, and he narrated copiously from Ibn Abi Shaybah, Ibn Kasib and Hisham.

Those who transmitted from him include: his daughter Umm al-Ḍaḥḥak ʿAtikah; Ahmad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Maʿbad; the judge Abu Ahmad al-ʿAssal; Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Ayyub; ʿAbd al-Raḥman ibn Muhammad ibn Siyah; Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAsim; Ahmad ibn Bundar al-Shaʿʿar; Muhammad ibn Maʿmar ibn Naṣiḥ; Abu Shaykh; Abu Bakr al-Qabbab—he was the last of his companions to die—and Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Kisāʾi.

Abu Saʿid ibn al-Aʿrabi says in his book “Generations of the Devout”: “As for Abu Bakr Ibn Abi ʿAsim, I heard someone relate that he had memorised a thousand legal questions from Shaqiq al-Balkhi. He was among the preservers of hadith and jurisprudence, and his methodology was to adhere to the outward wording of the texts and to reject analogy (qiyās).”

I read before Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Dashti (1): “Yusuf the ḥāfiẓ informs you; Masʿud ibn Abi Mansur al-Jammal narrated to us,” (ḥāʾ).

Ahmad ibn Salamah (2) also reported to us, from al-Jammal, who said: “Abu ʿAli al-Ḥaddad informed us; Abu Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ informed us, saying:

‘Ahmad ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Ḍaḥḥak ibn Makhlad ibn Muslim ibn Rafiʿ ibn Rafiʿ ibn Dhuhl ibn Shayban—Abu Bakr—was a jurist of the Zāhirī school. He held the judgeship in Isfahan for thirteen years after Ṣalih ibn Ahmad. He died, and his son al-Ḥakam led the funeral prayer over him. He had heard, through his maternal grandfather Musa ibn Ismaʿil, the written collections of Ḥammad ibn Salamah, and he also narrated from Abu al-Walid, ʿAmr ibn Marzuq and al-Ḥawdi (3).’”