He met Yahya ibn Muhammad al-Dhuhli and Abu Hatim al-Razi.

He also heard hadith from al-Fadl ibn Muhammad al-Shaʿrani, Ismaʿil ibn Qutaybah, Yusuf ibn Yaʿqub al-Qazwini, al-Harith ibn Abi Usamah, Hisham ibn ʿAli al-Sirafi, ʿAli ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Baghawi, Ismaʿil the judge, Muhammad ibn Ayyub al-Bajali, and their peers in Nishapur, the Hijaz, Basra, Baghdad, and Rayy.

He gathered and authored works, excelled in jurisprudence, and distinguished himself in the science of hadith.

He performed the pilgrimage in 283 AH, and there Abu al-Qasim al-Baghawi read to him—before his uncle—the book al-Muntaqa al-Musnad.

Those who transmitted from him include: Hamzah ibn Muhammad al-Zaydi, Abu ʿAli al-Hafiz, Abu Ahmad al-Hakim, Abu Bakr al-Ismaʿili, Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Jurjani, Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Hakim, and many others.

Al-Hakim said: I heard him relate, “When I reached adolescence I busied myself with learning horsemanship and had not heard even a single letter of hadith. I was taken to Rayy while Abu Hatim was still alive, and I asked him about a question concerning my father’s estate. We then returned to Nishapur in 280 AH. As I stood at the door of our house with Abu Hamid ibn al-Sharqi and Abu Hamid ibn Hasnawayh seated there, they said to me, ‘Apply yourself to hearing hadith.’

“I asked, ‘From whom?’

“They replied, ‘From Ismaʿil ibn Qutaybah.’

“So I went to him, listened, and developed a passion for hadith; a year later I set out for Iraq.”

Al-Hakim comments: The Imam Abu Bakr continued giving legal verdicts in Nishapur for a little more than fifty years, and no one ever recorded a single instance in which he erred in his rulings (1).

He also produced extensive works, such as (Purification),