Among those who transmitted from him were: al-Dāraqutnī; Abū Ḥafṣ ibn Shāhīn; Abū ʿAbd Allah ibn Mandah; Abū Bakr ibn Mardāwayh; Abū Saʿīd al-Naqqāsh; Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Narsī; Abū ʿAlī ibn Shādhān; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Maḥāmilī; Abū al-Qāsim ibn Bishrān; the scholar Abū Isḥāq al-Isfarāyīnī; al-Faḍl ibn ʿUbayd Allah ibn Shahrayār the merchant; Ṭalḥah ibn al-Ṣaqr al-Kattānī; Makkī ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥarīrī; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUbayd Allah al-Ḥurafī; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Nimṭ; al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Baṭḥāʾ; ʿAbd al-Ghaffār ibn Muḥammad the tutor; ʿUthmān ibn Dūst al-ʿAllāf; al-Ḥasan ibn Dūmā al-Niʿālī; ʿAbd al-Bāqī ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭaḥḥān; Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Ghaylān, and many others besides them.
He would journey to various lands on trading expeditions, and he collected ḥadith in Egypt, Greater Syria, the Jazīrah, and elsewhere.
Al-Khaṭīb said: “He was trustworthy, precise, possessed an abundance of ḥadith, authored fine works, and gathered together both teachers and subject-matters. Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Makhlad told me that he attended a session which Abū Bakr dictated while Abū Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid was still alive.”⦗1⦘
Ḥamzah al-Sahmī relates: “Al-Dāraqutnī was asked about Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī and replied, ‘He is a mountain of reliability; at that time no one was more trustworthy than he.’”
Al-Dāraqutnī also said: “Our informant was Abū Bakr, reliable and trustworthy, against whom no fault has ever been alleged.”
I add: Al-Dāraqutnī selected from him his quaternary-chained reports and compiled them in a large fascicle which we have heard.
He passed away in the month of Dhu al-Ḥijjah in the year four and fifty and three—