and al-Zuhri; Yūsuf ibn Wāḍiḥ, the tutor; and countless others—so many that he eventually reported traditions from people who were his own contemporaries.

He was a vast ocean of knowledge, endowed with keen understanding, rigorous precision, penetrating insight, mastery in the criticism of transmitters, and an excellent literary style.

He travelled in pursuit of learning through Khurasan, the Ḥijaz, Egypt, Iraq, al-Jazīrah, Syria, and the frontier towns. He then settled in Egypt, where the leading hadith scholars journeyed to him, and in that discipline he had no peer left.

Those who transmitted from him include: Abū Bishr al-Dūlābī; Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī; Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī; Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad al-Kinānī; Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Naḥḥās the grammarian; Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥaddād al-Shāfiʿī; ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nasāʾī; al-Ḥasan ibn al-Khaḍir al-Asyūṭī; Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sinnī; Abū al-Qāsim Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭabarānī; Muḥammad ibn Muʿāwiyah ibn al-Aḥmar al-Andalusī; al-Ḥasan ibn Rashīq; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥayyuwayh al-Naysābūrī; Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Maʾmūnī; Abyad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abyad; and a great many others.

He was an imposing shaykh, handsome of face, fair-complexioned, and with a distinguished beard.

The judge of Egypt, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-ʿAwwām al-Saʿdī, narrated: “Aḥmad ibn Shuʿayb al-Nasāʾī related to us; Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh informed us; Muḥammad ibn Aʿyan narrated to us, saying: I said to Ibn al-Mubārak, ‘So-and-so says: Whoever claims that the Almighty’s words—“Indeed, I, only I, am Allah; there is no god but Me, so worship Me” (20:14)—are created, is an unbeliever.’ Ibn al-Mubārak replied, ‘He has spoken the truth.’ Al-Nasāʾī then commented, ‘This is exactly my position.’