“A fair number.”

He then asked, “How many does he have from Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh?”
I replied, “Many.”

He said, “From which of our own teachers did he write?”
I paused to think and said to myself, “If I name for him a shaykh he has written from, he will belittle him.”
So I answered, “He wrote from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Musayyibī, Maḥfūẓ ibn Abī Tawbah, and ʿĪsā ibn Musāwir al-Jawharī.”

He asked, “In what year did he enter Baghdad?”
I said, “In 234 AH—I think.”

At this he was visibly moved and said, “I have ordered that the names of my teachers from whom no one but I transmits today be recorded; they have reached eighty-seven teachers.”

Al-Ḥākim added: At that time in Baghdad there were al-Bāghandī, Abū al-Layth the inheritance-jurist, al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUfair, ʿAlī ibn al-Mubārak al-Masrūrī, and others.

I (the author) say: Al-Baghawī lived six more years after making that statement and became the sole transmitter from many scholars besides those already mentioned.

It has also been said that he narrated nothing from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn except his remark: When he came out from the presence of Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, we asked, “What do you say about the man?” He replied, “He is reliable, the son of a reliable man.”

Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdān the ḥāfiẓ said: I heard Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī say:
“One day I felt distressed, so I went out to the riverbank, sat down, and in my hand was a fascicle of narrations from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn that I was reading. Mūsā ibn Hārūn came by and said, ‘What is that with you?’ I answered, ‘A fascicle from Ibn Maʿīn.’ He snatched it from my hand, threw it into the Tigris, and said, ‘Do you want to combine Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, and ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī!’ I said, ‘How badly Mūsā has acted! May Allah pardon him.’ ”

We have also transmitted from al-Baghawī that he said: “I attended, together with my uncle, the gathering of ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAlī.”

Abū al-Ghanāʾim al-Qaysī, Muʾammal ibn Muḥammad, and Yūsuf al-Shaybānī informed us, by authorization, saying: Abū al-Yaman al-Kindī informed us; Abū Manṣūr al-Shaybānī informed us;