ibn ʿImrān al-ʿĀbidī, together with a number of scholars in Medina; and Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-ʿAdanī and others in Mecca.

He gathered traditions, authored compilations, and became outstanding in this field.

Among those who narrated from him were: Abū Ḥāmid ibn al-Sharqī, Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān ibn Fāris, Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Akhram, Abū Bakr al-Ṣibghī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdūn al-Dhuhlī, Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad ibn Abī Bakr al-Ḥīrī, and a host of scholars from whom al-Ḥākim himself learnt.

Al-Ḥākim said: I heard Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī, who heard Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj, say, “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū ʿAmr al-Khaffāf; he would recite hadith continuously, including even the broken-chained (munqaṭiʿ) and the mursal reports.” (1)

Al-Ḥākim also said: I heard al-Ṣibghī say, “Abū ʿAmr al-Khaffāf fasted perpetually for a little over thirty years.” (2)

I say: If only he had alternated between fasting and breaking the fast; for—by Allah—the prohibition of lifelong fasting was certainly not unknown to him. Yet he had predecessors in adopting it, and had they chosen the best form of fasting they would have confined themselves to the fast of David, peace be upon him. (3)

He (al-Ḥākim) said: I heard al-Ṣibghī, more than once, say, “We used to remark that Abū ʿImrān’s notebooks amounted to a hundred thousand hadith.”

He also said: I heard Abū Zakariyyā al-ʿAnbarī say, “The beginning of Abū ʿAmr’s career was …”