the most accomplished of men in retaining jurisprudential details and the various legal views of the Companions. (1)"

He transmitted ḥadith in Naysābūr, Iraq, Egypt, Greater Syria, and the Ḥijāz.

Al-Burqānī said, “I heard al-Dāraqutnī say, ‘I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū Bakr al-Naysābūrī.’ (2)”

Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī relates: “I asked al-Dāraqutnī about Abū Bakr al-Naysābūrī and he replied, ‘We have not seen his like among our teachers. No one surpassed him in preserving the chains of transmission and the texts. He was the most learned in jurisprudence of all the shaykhs, had sat with al-Muzanī and al-Rabīʿ, and could discern the extra wording that sometimes finds its way into the texts.’

When he first took his seat to teach, people urged him, ‘Narrate to us!’ He answered, ‘Rather, ask.’ They questioned him about several ḥadith; he answered them, dictated the answers, and only after that did he begin to narrate. (3)

Abū al-Fatḥ Yūsuf al-Qawwās said: I heard Abū Bakr al-Naysābūrī remark, “Do you know anyone who, for forty years, never slept at night, lived each day on five grains of food, and performed the dawn prayer with the ablution made for the late-night ʿishāʾ?”

Then he said, “I am that man—and all of this was before I came to know Umm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. So what should I say to the one who married me to her?”

He then added, “He only intended good.” (4)

I say: Abū Bakr was indeed among the first-rate ḥadith masters.

He passed away in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir of the year 324 AH, at a little over eighty years of age.