and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn Najīḥ, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī al-Jahḍamī, al-Haytham ibn Marwān, and several others.

Those who transmitted ḥadith from him include Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUtbah al-Rāzī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn al-Ward, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Kharūf, Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī, al-Ḥasan ibn Rashīq, Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al-Abīwardī, and many others.

Ḥamzah al-Sahmī said, “I asked al-Dāraqutnī about him, and he replied, ‘In ḥadith he was nothing special. I heard in Egypt that he had been appointed governor of a village. He kept pressing the people for the land-tax, but they would not pay it.

“So he herded the pigs into the mosque.’

“I said, ‘Then how is he as a transmitter of ḥadith?’

“He answered, ‘He related reports for which he has no corroboration, and our colleagues in Egypt spoke critically of him.’”

Ibn Yūnus said, “He was intelligent and possessed a good memory. He died in Egypt in Dhu al-Qaʿdah of the year 299 AH.”

I (the author) say: the kāf at the end of ʿUlayyik is the Persian diminutive suffix attached to the name ʿAlī.

As for ʿAlī ibn Saʿīd al-ʿAskarī—the author of the book al-Sarāʾir—he is someone else altogether; he died in 313 AH (1).

81 – al-Farhayānī, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Sayyār*

The Imām, ḥadith master, and critic, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Sayyār