He replied, “Choose whatever you wish for yourself, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān; as for me, I narrate from everyone whose reports I have ever written down.”

Al-Nasāʾī said, “He is reliable.”

Ibn ʿAdī stated, “Trustworthy. In the main mosque of Egypt there was a mangonel on which the night-worshippers would light a chandelier; he used to sit nearby, and so he was nicknamed al-Minjaniqī.”

Al-Dāraqutnī said, “Reliable.”

Ibn Yūnus said, “Truthful, a righteous man.”

He died in Jumada al-Akhira, 304 AH.

76 – Ibn Mattuwayh, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan*

The imam, the trusted authority, the exemplar: Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Mattuwayh al-Isfahānī, imam of the congregational mosque of Isfahan. He was among the devout and the eminent, known for continuous fasting, a ḥadith master (ḥāfiẓ), a definitive authority and a fountainhead of integrity. He was also known as Abbah (1) and as Ibn Fīrrah the mason.

He travelled through Syria, Iraq, the Haram, and Egypt, where he heard ḥadith from Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī al-Shawārib, Bishr ibn Muʿādh, Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ, Muḥammad ibn Hāshim al-Baʿlabakkī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn al-ʿAlāʾ al-ʿAṭṭār, Hishām ibn Khālid al-Azraq, and their peers.