Ibrāhīm, son of the ḥadith scholar Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah ibn ʿImārah al-Isbahānī.

He was born in the late 270s AH.

He heard ḥadith from Abū Khalīfah al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥubāb and his peers in Basra; from Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥaḍramī and a number of others in Kūfah; from Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb the judge; from Abū Shuʿayb al-Ḥarrānī, Ibn Nājah, al-Firyābī and their contemporaries in Baghdad; from Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Zuhayr al-Tustarī; and from many others besides.

Those who narrated from him include Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Manda, Abū Saʿīd al-Naqqāsh, Abū Bakr Ibn Mardawayh, Abū Bakr Ibn Abī ʿAlī, ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbdkuwayh, Abū Nuʿaym, and others.

Abū Nuʿaym said: “He was peerless in his era for memorisation; since Ibn Muẓāhir, no one has been seen whose retention matched his. He gathered both the shaykhs and their musnads.”

He also remarked: “Their forefather ʿImārah is the son of Ḥamzah ibn Yasār ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥafṣ, and this Ḥafṣ is the brother of Abū Muslim al-Khurāsānī, the leader of the Abbasid daʿwah.”

The ḥadith master Ibn Manda said: “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū Isḥāq Ibn Ḥamzah.”

Abū Jaʿfar Ibn Abī al-Sarī reported: “I heard Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn ʿUqda say, ‘I have never seen the like of Ibn Ḥamzah in memorisation.’”

Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim stated: “In our time there were several scholars whose classified musnads arranged by subject each reached a thousand volumes; among them were Abū Isḥāq Ibn Ḥamzah and al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Māsarjīsī.”

Abū Nuʿaym further related: “He died on the seventh of Ramaḍān, 353 AH.”