the luminary of his age, the itinerant scholar of his time: Abū al-ʿAbbās, the Umayyad client, al-Sinānī, al-Maʿqilī, al-Naysābūrī—better known as al-Aṣamm—the son of the ḥadith scholar and ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Faḍl al-Warrāq.

His father had been a pupil of Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh and ʿAlī ibn Ḥujr, and, as Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim remarked, he possessed one of the finest scripts among men.

Those who narrated from him include Muḥammad ibn Makhlad al-Dūrī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim, Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-ʿAtakī, and his own son, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm.

He died in 277 AH.

He travelled with his son Abū al-ʿAbbās throughout the lands, giving him access to the great collections. The son therefore heard (2) from Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Sulamī and Aḥmad ibn al-Azhar; he was the last of their students there (3), though no dependable record of that audition survives (4). He also heard in Isfahān from Hārūn ibn Sulaymān and Asīd ibn ʿĀṣim; in Baghdad from Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā Asad al-Marwazī—the companion of Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah—ʿAbbās al-Dūrī, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Ṣaghānī, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib, Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn al-Munadī, and others.

In Egypt he studied with Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān al-Murādī, Baḥr ibn Naṣr al-Khawlānī, and their contemporaries.

In Damascus he heard from Muḥammad ibn Hishām ibn Mallās al-Numayrī, Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, and Abū Zurʿah al-Naṣrī,

and in Beirut from: