Al-Hisnajānī transmitted the Book of Zuhd from Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Ḥawārī; he also narrated from Abū Muṣʿab and Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, amassing an impressive body of material and preserving it with care.
60 – Al-Ismāʿīlī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Mihrān
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ, indefatigable traveller, and reliable authority: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Mihrān al-Nīshāpūrī, better known as al-Ismāʿīlī.
He predates the Shāfiʿī shaykh of Jurjān, Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī (1).
This senior scholar (2) heard ḥadith from Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, Ḥarmalah ibn Yaḥyā, ʿĪsā ibn Zughbah, Muḥammad ibn Bakkār, Abū Ḥamzah Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Zubaydī, Muḥammad ibn Rumḥ, Abū Nuʿaym al-Ḥalabī, Duḥaym, Abū Kurayb, and many of their contemporaries. He collected extensively and authored a number of works.
Those who narrated from him include: his companion Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib; Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj; Ibn al-Sharqī; Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Rāzī; Muḥammad ibn al-Akhram; Dalaj al-Sijzī; Ismāʿīl ibn Nujayd; ʿAlī ibn Ḥamshādh; and his son Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad.
Al-Ḥākim said, “He was one of the pillars of ḥadith in Nishapur—distinguished both by the sheer volume of his material and by the distances he travelled.”