Those who narrated from him included Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥāfiẓ, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥajjājī, Ibn Manda, Abū Saʿīd al-Ṣayrafī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Jurjānī, and others.

Al-Ḥākim said, “He was the foremost hadith scholar of his time; his supplications were answered. For a little over forty years—so we have been informed—he never lifted his head (1) toward the sky (2).”

His copy-scribe, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Miṣrī, betrayed him, absconding with the choicest parts of his library and more than five hundred fascicles from his autograph collections. Abū ʿAbd Allāh treated him courteously and strove hard to recover them, but to no avail; the man’s knowledge vanished when the shaykh invoked Allah against him (3).

The shaykh passed away in Dhū al-Qaʿda, 339 AH, at the age of ninety-eight.

In that same year there also died the musnid of Baghdad, Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Bakhtarī; the musnid of the frontier towns, ʿAlī ibn Abī Maṭar al-Iskandarānī, who had reached one hundred years; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿĀṣim al-Karrānī; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Faḍālah al-Ḥimṣī in Egypt; al-Qāhir billāh; Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān al-Fārābī, the philosopher; and the judge ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ushnānī.

249 – al-Ṣaffār, Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Ismāʿīl*

The imām, the ḥāfiẓ, the meticulous scholar: Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd ibn Ismāʿīl,