This is a sound hadith, agreed upon (1); its chain of transmission is as clear as the midday sun.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shīrāzī said: “I heard Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Umawī say:
‘I heard Ibn Manīʿ say: I met Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām, but I never heard anything directly from him, although I attended his funeral in the year 224 AH.’ ”

I (the author) say: Al-Umawī was branded a liar by Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī.

Abū Bakr ibn Shādhān said: “I heard al-Baghawī say: ‘I was born in the year 213 AH.’ ”

Al-Khaṭīb said: Ibn Shāhīn likewise reported: “I heard him say: ‘I was born in the year 214.’ ”
Al-Khaṭīb added: “Ibn Shāhīn is the more accurate of the two.”

Ibn Shāhīn also related: “I heard him say: ‘The first year I began writing down hadith was 225 AH, from Isḥāq ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṭālqānī.’ ”

Abū Muḥammad al-Rāmahurmuzī stated: “Within Islam no traditionist is known who matched al-Baghawī in the early age at which he began hearing hadith.”

I (the author) comment: Up to his time that is true; after him, however, the same distinction was shared by a number of scholars: ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Zubayrī—the musnid of Transoxiana—, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād, and, more recently, Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Shuhna.

Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim said: “Al-Baghawī asked me, ‘What news do you have of that shaykh of yours?’
I replied, ‘Which of the two shaykhs do you mean?’
He said, ‘The one who narrates from Qutaybah—meaning Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj.’
I said, ‘I left him alive.’
He asked, ‘How many hadiths does he possess from Qutaybah?’
I answered: