85 – Ibn al-Sakan, Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Miṣrī*

The imām, ḥadīth master, and distinguished critic, Abū ʿAlī Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd ibn al-Sakan al-Miṣrī the cloth-merchant, originally hailed from Baghdad.

He settled in Egypt after extensive journeys stretched between the two rivers—the Jīḥūn (Amu Darya) and the Nile. He was born in 294 AH.

In Baghdad he studied under Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Ibn Abī Dāwūd, and their peers; in Harrān he learned from the ḥadīth master Abū ʿArūbah and a number of others; in Damascus from Aḥmad ibn ʿUmayr ibn Jawṣā, Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḥalabī, and their contemporaries. While in Khurāsān he received the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī from Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Firabrī, becoming the first to bring the Ṣaḥīḥ to Egypt and teach it there. Among those who caught up with him in Egypt were Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Badr al-Bāhilī, ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ʿAllān, and Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī.

He likewise heard in Damascus from Muḥammad ibn Khuraym and a group of the remaining students of Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, and in Nīshāpūr from Abū Ḥāmid ibn al-Sharqī and Makkī ibn ʿAbdān. His livelihood in trade funded these far-reaching travels.

He compiled and authored works, declared transmitters reliable or weak, authenticated chains and exposed hidden defects.

We have not seen his writings; they are said to be in the hands of the scholars of the Maghrib.

Those who narrated from him include: Abū Sulaymān ibn Zabr, Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mandah, ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Azdī, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Daqqāq, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar ibn al-Naḥḥās, and ʿAbd