“…I have transmitted fifty thousand hadith from memory, until my books finally reached me. (1)

I (the author) add: I have found no one who recorded the exact year of his death; it seems to have occurred in the early 330s AH (2), and he lived a little over seventy years.

248 – al-Ṣaffār, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad*

The shaykh, the imām, the hadith scholar, the exemplar: Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Iṣfahānī, known as al-Ṣaffār, the ascetic.

He heard hadith from Aḥmad ibn ʿIṣām, Usaid (3) ibn ʿĀṣim, Aḥmad ibn Mahdī, ʿUbayd al-Ghazzāl, and several others in Isfahan after 260 AH.

In Fars he studied under Aḥmad ibn Mihrān ibn Khālid; in Baghdad he learned from Muḥammad ibn al-Faraj al-Azraq, Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Narsī, and Ibn Abī Usāmah.

He also received written compilations from Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā, and in Mecca he heard from ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.

He gathered and authored works on the Zuhrī traditions, travelled to Nīshāpūr after the year 300 (4), settled there, and studied the Musnad al-Kabīr under ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. He copied the writings of Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī, kept company with saints and devoted worshippers, and journeyed to al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, from whom he acquired the Musnad and the books of Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah.