and the ḥadith scholars thronged around him, travelling to him from every direction. He met the pupils of Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Rūḥ ibn ʿUbādah, Abū ʿĀṣim, Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad, and ʿAbd al-Razzāq, and he went on writing until he even wrote from his own contemporaries.
He heard from Hāshim ibn Marthad al-Ṭabarānī and from Aḥmad ibn Masʿūd the tailor, who related to him in Jerusalem in the year 274 AH on the authority of ʿAmr ibn Abī Salamah al-Tinnīsī. In Tiberias he studied with Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Liḥyānī, a disciple of Ādam; and in Caesarea with ʿAmr ibn Thawr and Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Sufyān, both students of al-Firyābī. Altogether he learned from roughly one thousand shaykhs, if not more.
Among those from whom he narrated were: Abū Zurʿah al-Dimashqī; Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dabri; Idrīs ibn Jaʿfar al-ʿAṭṭār; Bishr ibn Mūsā; Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar Sanjah; ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Baghawī, who resided in the Sacred Precinct; Miqdām ibn Dāwud al-Ruʿaynī; Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb al-ʿAllāf; ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Abī Maryam; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Ḥawṭī; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Fīl al-Bālisī; Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Busrī; Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Nubayṭ al-Ashjaʿī—the one who possessed that fabricated copy; Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Khashshāb; Aḥmad ibn Dāwud al-Baṣrī, later al-Makkī; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah al-Batlihī; and Aḥmad ibn Khalīd al-Ḥalabī, whom he met there in 278 AH.
He also transmitted from Aḥmad ibn Ziyād ar-Raqqī al-Ḥadhdhāʾ, a disciple of Ḥajjāj al-Aʿwar; Ibrāhīm ibn Suwayd al-Shabāmī; Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Bazza al-Ṣanʿānī; al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Bawsī—each of them a student of ʿAbd al-Razzāq; Bakr ibn Sahl al-Dimyāṭī; Ḥabbūsh ibn Rizq Allāh al-Miṣrī; Abū al-Zinbaʿ Rūḥ ibn al-Faraj al-Qaṭṭān; al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Faḍl al-Asfāṭī; ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Maṣīṣī; and ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Barqī. From the latter he heard the Sīrah, but the narrator erred and referred to him as Aḥmad.