Shāhinshāh—the ḥadith master (ḥāfiẓ), leading imam, decisive authority, a long-lived scholar and the musnid of his age—Abū al-Qāsim, Baghawī by origin and a native as well as resident of Baghdad.
He is linked to the town of Bagshūr, one of the cities of the Khurāsān province, lying a day’s journey from Herat. His father and his uncle, the ḥadith master ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Baghawī, both came from there.
He is also known as “Ibn Manīʿ,” in reference to his maternal grandfather, the ḥāfiẓ Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ al-Baghawī al-Aṣamm, author of the Musnad and long-time resident of Baghdad; Muslim, Abū Dāwūd and others transmitted from that grandfather.
Abū al-Qāsim was born on Monday, the first day of Ramaḍān in 214 AH. He himself dictated this information to ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥabbābah al-Bazzār, telling him that he had seen it written in the hand of his grandfather—namely Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ.
His grandfather took special care of him, letting him hear ḥadith while still a child. Indeed, he copied out an audition in his own hand in Rabīʿ al-Awwal 225 AH, when he was only ten and a half. We know of no one in that era who pursued ḥadith and wrote it down at a younger age than Abū al-Qāsim. Thanks to this, he obtained lofty chains of transmission, and a number of scholars related to him from the younger generation of the Successors.
He heard hadith from: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī; ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd; Abū Naṣr al-Tammār; Khalaf ibn Hishām al-Bazzār; Hudbah ibn Khālid; Shaybān ibn Farrūkh; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Hārithī; Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ḥimmanī; Bishr ibn al-Walīd al-Kindī; ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAyshī; Ḥājib ibn al-Walīd; Abū al-Aḥwaṣ Muḥammad ibn Ḥayyān al-Baghawī; Muḥriz ibn ʿAwn; Suwayd ibn Saʿīd; Dāwūd ibn ʿAmr al-Ḍabbī; Dāwūd ibn Rushayd; Abū Bakr ibn Shaybah; Muḥammad ibn Ḥassān al-Samti; Abū al-Rabīʿ al-Zahrānī; and ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar