218 – al-ʿAbbār, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī

The ḥāfiẓ, the meticulous master, the godly Imām, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muslim al-ʿAbbār, counted among the scholars of hadith in Baghdad.

He narrated from Musaddad ibn Musarhad, Muḥammad ibn al-Minhāl, ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd, Umayya ibn Bisṭām, Hudbah, Ibrāhīm ibn Hishām al-Ghassānī, Yaḥyā al-Ḥimmānī, ʿAlī ibn ʿUthmān al-Lāḥiqī, Shaybān ibn Farrūkh, Duḥaym, Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, and their contemporaries in Syria, Iraq, and Khurāsān.

He collected materials, authored works, and compiled historical writings.

Those who reported from him include Yaḥyā ibn Ṣāʿid, Abū Bakr al-Najjād, Daʿlaj al-Sijzī, Abū Sahl ibn Ziyād, Abū Bakr al-Qaṭīʿī, Jaʿfar al-Khuldī, and many others.

Al-Khaṭīb said: “He was trustworthy, a ḥāfiẓ, precise, and of sound doctrine.” (1)

Jaʿfar al-Khuldī said: “Al-ʿAbbār was among the most ascetic of people. He sought his mother’s permission to travel to study under Qutaybah, but she did not allow him. After her death he set out for Khurāsān, and when he reached Balkh Qutaybah had already died. People offered him condolences over that, but he said, ‘This is the fruit of knowledge: I preferred my mother’s good pleasure.’” (2)