34 – Ibn Ziyād al-Naysābūrī, Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad
The imam, ḥadith master, erudite scholar, and Shaykh al-Islām: Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Ziyād ibn Wāṣil ibn Maymūn al-Naysābūrī, a client of the Commander of the Believers ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, an Umayyad (1), a ḥadith authority of the Shāfiʿī school, and a prolific author.
He studied jurisprudence under al-Muzanī, al-Rabīʿ, and Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, learning from them as well as from: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī, Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Sulamī, Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Wahb, Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī, al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Walīd al-ʿUdhri, Muḥammad ibn ʿAzīz al-Aylī, Ibn Wārah, Ibn Ḥātim, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Khanājir, Bakkār ibn Qutayba, Abū Bakr al-Ṣāghānī, and many others of their rank.
He excelled in both disciplines—hadith and fiqh—and outstripped his contemporaries.
Those who received knowledge from him include the ḥadith master Mūsā ibn Hārūn—his senior, indeed one of his own teachers—and such narrators as Ibn ʿUqda, Abū Isḥāq ibn Ḥamza, Ḥamza ibn Muḥammad al-Kinānī, Ibn al-Muẓaffar, al-Dāraqutnī, Ibn Shāhīn, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kattānī, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Ṣaydalanī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khurashīd Qawlah, and a host of others.
Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim said, “He was the leading Shāfiʿī imam of his era in Iraq, and among…"