He was born in 281 AH.
He heard ḥadith from his father, from Aḥmad ibn Ḥammād Zughbah, ʿAlī ibn Saʿīd al-Rāzī, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nasāʾī, ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Sahl al-Baghdādī, Abū Yaʿqūb al-Minjanīqī, ʿAlī ibn Qudayd, ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ʿAllān, and many others.
He never travelled—nor did he take transmissions outside Egypt—yet he was an imām, keen-sighted in the evaluation of narrators, intelligent and fully alert.
Those who transmitted from him include ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad ibn Masrūr al-Balkhī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mandah, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Naḥḥās, and others.
I have produced an abridgement of his History and have extracted from it a number of singular reports.
He died in Jumādā al-Ākhirah of 347 AH at the age of sixty-six.
In that same year passed away: the scholar and chief musnid of Damascus, the judge Abū al-Ḥasan Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān ibn Ḥadhlam al-Asadī; the musnid of Kūfah, Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī ibn Mātī (1); the grammarian of Iraq, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar ibn Darastawayh al-Fārisī; the traditionist of Damascus, Abū al-Maymūn Rāshid al-Bajalī; Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Khuzaymah of Baghdad; Abū al-Faḍl Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad, son of the ḥāfiẓ al-Faḍl ibn Muḥammad al-Shaʿrānī al-Naysābūrī; and Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAbbās al-ʿAqabī al-Baghdādī, the dihqān.