Jaʿfar ibn Midrar, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Muḥammad ibn Zabalah al-Madani, and a host of others besides them.

He compiled works of biographical notices, thematic chapters, and catalogues of teachers; his narrations spread far and his reputation became renowned. He wrote down reports from everyone who walked the earth and passed on—great and small, well-known and obscure—mingling the lean with the fat, the common beads with the most precious pearls.

Among those who transmitted from him were: al-Ṭabarānī, Ibn ʿAdī, Abū Bakr ibn al-Jiʿābī, Ibn al-Muẓaffar, Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī, Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, Ibn al-Muqriʾ, Ibn Shāhīn, ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Kattānī, Abū ʿUbayd Allah al-Marzabānī, Ibn Jumayʿ al-Ghassānī, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allah Khurrashīdh Qūlah, Abū ʿUmar ibn Mahdī, Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn al-Mutayyam, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣalt al-Ahwāzī, and many others.

I have obtained his narrations through an elevated chain.

I read aloud to Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Dimashqī, who said: “ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Faḍl al-Anṣārī, the judge, informed you in the year 609 AH while you were in the fourth tier.” He added: “Jamāl al-Islām Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Musallam al-Sulamī informed us in 528 AH; al-Ḥusayn ibn Ṭalab the preacher informed us; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ghassānī informed us; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd, the ḥāfiẓ, informed us; Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā ibn Shaybān narrated to us; ʿAlī ibn Sayf ibn ʿAmīrah narrated to us; my father narrated to me; al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿUbayd Allah al-Nakhaʿī narrated to me; my father narrated to me, from Thaʿlabah Abū Baḥr, from Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) who said:

The Prophet ﷺ smiled broadly and said:

“I am amazed at the affair of the believer; Allah never decrees anything for him except that it is good for him.” (1)