Abū Bakr ibn Hidayah Allāh al-Ḥusaynī said, “He was one of the eminent imams, and in the closing years of his life he no longer followed anyone else’s authority.”

Al-Subkī remarked, “The four Muhammads—Muḥammad ibn Naṣr, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Ibn Khuzaymah, and Ibn al-Mundhir—are counted among our scholars. They attained the rank of unrestricted ijtihād, yet that did not remove them from being adherents of al-Shāfiʿī: they derived their rulings on the basis of his principles and practiced jurisprudence within his school, for their independent reasoning coincided with his. Some of our later, devoted Shāfiʿīs—such as Shaykh Abū ʿAlī and others—claimed that their own views matched those of the great Imām, so they followed him and were ascribed to him, not because they engaged in blind imitation. If that is said of those who came later, what do you think of these four? Although they disagreed with the great Imām in many questions, for the most part they did not depart from him. Know, therefore, that they are counted among the Shāfiʿī ranks: in most cases their rulings are issued according to his principles, refined by his method, and situated within his school.” End quote.

I say: Al-Subkī’s statement that Ibn al-Mundhir reached the level of absolute ijtihād agrees with what other biographers have affirmed. His insistence, however, on counting Ibn al-Mundhir among the Shāfiʿīs can be accepted only as a concession: Ibn al-Mundhir himself declared that he had read al-Shāfiʿī’s works in Egypt, so he may be linked to al-Shāfiʿī in terms of study. As for actual following, Ibn al-Mundhir plainly trod the path of the ḥadīth scholars, adhering to the evidence without binding himself to any single madhhab. In truth, this is precisely the method of al-Shāfiʿī himself, indeed of all the leading imams among the early generations whose schools are followed—such as Mālik, Aḥmad, al-Thawrī, and others (may Allah have mercy on them all).

Teachers. He had many teachers, among them: Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm, al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Khuzaymah, al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ṣabāḥ, Muḥammad ibn Tawbah, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥakam, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣāʾigh, and many others.

Pupils. Al-Subkī said, “Among those who narrated from him were Abū Bakr ibn al-Maqriʾ and Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn ʿAmmār…"