He heard from: Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-ʿUṭāridī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā, and a group of others.
Those who transmitted from him include: Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Razqūyah, Abū al-Qāsim ibn al-Munḏir, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bādī, Abū ʿAlī ibn Shādhān, and others.
He was the khāṭib (Friday preacher) of the congregational mosque in Baghdad, and he used to say, “Al-Wāthiq once ascended this pulpit, and so have I; both of us stand at the same degree of kinship to al-Manṣūr.” (1)
I say: he lived on for about one hundred and twenty years after al-Wāthiq (2).
Al-Khaṭīb declared him reliable (3).
He died in Ṣafar of the year 350 AH, at the age of eighty-seven.
Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn al-Sulaymī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Faqīh, Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Khayyāṭ, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qazzāz, Abū al-Maʿālī Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, ʿAlī ibn Jaʿfar the muʾaḏḏin, and Baybars al-Majdī all informed us, saying:
Yahyā ibn Abī al-Suʿūd al-Bazzāz informed us, saying:
Shuhdah the scribe told us; Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Bāqallānī told us; al-Ḥasan ibn Bakr al-Bazzāz told us; and Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ismāʿīl al-Hāshimī, Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad al-Dihqān, Abū Sahl al-Qaṭṭān, and Ibn al-Sammāk all told us:
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār informed us, saying: “Abū Muʿāwiyah narrated to us, from Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid, from Qays, from…"