Abū al-Makārim al-Labbān reported to us, through Ghānim al-Burjī, who said that he heard ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Haytham say, “I heard Abū Jaʿfar ibn Abī al-Sarī remark: ‘I met Ibn ʿUqdah in Kūfah. One day I asked him to repeat for me a passage I had missed (1), but he refused. I pressed him, whereupon he asked, “From which town are you?”

“I said, ‘From Isfahān.’

“He retorted, ‘A land of naṣibah—people who harbor enmity toward the Prophet’s Household.’

“I replied, ‘Do not say that, for in Isfahān there are jurists, men of merit, and devotees of the Shīʿah.’

“He asked, ‘The Shīʿah of Muʿāwiyah?’

“I said, ‘No, by Allah—rather the Shīʿah of ʿAlī. There is not a single one among them but that ʿAlī is dearer to him than his own eye and family.’ So he went back and recited for me what I had missed. Then he said, ‘Have you taken hadith from Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad al-Lakhmī?’

“I answered, ‘No, I do not know him.’

“He exclaimed, ‘Glory be to Allah! Abū al-Qāsim is in your very city and you do not take from him, yet you trouble me like this? In Kūfah I know no equal to Abū al-Qāsim. I have heard from him, and he has heard from me. Tell me, have you heard the Musnad of Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī?’

“I said, ‘No.’

“He replied, ‘You have squandered diligence, for its fountainhead is in Isfahān. Do you know Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥamzah?’

“I said, ‘Yes.’

“He said, ‘Seldom have I seen his like in memorization.’”

The ḥadith master Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Manda comments: “Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī is one of the eminent memorisers mentioned above. He narrated from Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Barqī, yet he was too young to have met him. Aḥmad died in Egypt in 266 AH.”

I say: We have already noted that al-Ṭabarānī slipped in the name of his teacher ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, calling him ‘Aḥmad’ and continuing to do so. The ḥadith scholar Abū Saʿīd ibn Yūnus dated the death of Aḥmad ibn al-Barqī thus in one place, and elsewhere placed it in 270 AH, in the month of Ramaḍān. In either case, al-Ṭabarānī neither met nor even approached him; he merely erred in the name. He received the Prophetic Sīrah from him by way of his hearing from ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām al-Sadūsī. Aḥmad ibn al-Barqī used to transmit from ʿAmr ibn Abī Salamah