He was born in 266 AH.

He narrated ḥadith from Isḥāq ibn Sunayn, Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, Ibrāhīm ibn Zuhayr, Muṭayyīn, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Harawī, al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, Ibn Khuzaymah, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ṣāʾigh, and many others.

He recited the Qur’an to Hārūn al-Akhfash and Aḥmad ibn Anas in Damascus; to al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥabbāb and others in Baghdad; to al-Ḥasan ibn Abī Mihrān in Rayy; and to Abū Rabīʿah Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, along with a number of other teachers.

Among those who read to him were Abū Bakr ibn Mihrān, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Jaʿfar al-Fārisī, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥammāmī, Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad al-Ṭabarī, Abū al-Faraj al-Shanabūdhī, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-ʿAllāf, ʿAlī ibn Jaʿfar al-Saʿīdī, Abū al-Faraj al-Nahrawānī, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Bashshār, and a host of others, the last of them to die being Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Zaydī al-Ḥarrānī.

Those who transmitted from him include Ibn Mujāhid—who was actually one of his teachers—al-Dāraquṭnī, Ibn Shāhīn, Abū Aḥmad al-Faraḍī, Abū ʿAlī ibn Shādhān, and Abū al-Qāsim al-Ḥurfī.

He is the author of Shifāʾ al-Ṣudūr, a Qur’anic commentary.

He travelled widely, had early contact with leading scholars, and in the discipline of qirāʾāt (variant Qur’anic readings) he was stronger than in ḥadith transmission.

His writings include al-Ishārah fī Gharīb al-Qurʾān, al-Manāsik, Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah, and the three Maʿājim—medium, large, and small—the largest of which is devoted to the profiles of Qur’an reciters. He also produced a voluminous tafsīr of roughly forty volumes, and a work