Nasr ibn Ahmad ibn Asad ibn Saman (1)—the Samanid—was one of the dynasty’s greatest rulers. The Samanids traced their lineage back to the ancient Persian sovereigns. Their forefather Saman had been a supporter of Abū Muslim al-Khurasānī and was himself of the progeny of Bahrām ibn Azdashīr ibn Sābūr. Saman’s son Asad was counted among the sagacious men of his time, and he left four sons—Nūḥ, Aḥmad, Yaḥyā, and Ilyās—each of whom governed a province of his own; these make up the Samanid line (2).

al-Tirmidhī (3): Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Sawrah ibn Mūsā ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk—others say Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Yazīd ibn Sawrah ibn al-Sakan, and it is also reported as Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Sawrah ibn Shaddād, Abū ʿĪsā al-Sulamī al-Tirmidhī the blind. Some maintain that he was born sightless (4).

He was one of the foremost ḥadīth authorities of his era and composed several renowned works: his Jāmiʿ, al-Shamāʾil, Asmāʾ al-Ṣaḥābah, and others. This Jāmiʿ has come to be counted among the Six Books to which scholars in every land return. The ignorance displayed by Ibn Ḥazm toward Abū ʿĪsā—when he wrote in his Muḥallā (5), “And who is Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Sawrah?”—neither harms Abū ʿĪsā in his religion or his worldly standing, nor diminishes his stature among the learned; rather, it lowers the estimation of Ibn Ḥazm in the sight of the ḥadīth masters:

How can an idea ever be deemed sound
If daylight itself is in need of proof?

We have listed his teachers in our book al-Takmīl. Many scholars transmitted from him, among them: Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī—in works other than the Ṣaḥīḥ—al-Haytham ibn Kulayb al-Shāshī, author of the Musnad; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Maḥbūb al-Maḥbūbī, who narrated the Jāmiʿ from him; and Muḥammad ibn al-Mundhir Shakkar.

The ḥāfiẓ Abū Yaʿlā Khalīl ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Khalīlī al-Qazwīnī said in his book ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth (6): “Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā ibn Sawrah ibn Shaddād is a ḥāfiẓ whose reliability is unanimously acknowledged; he authored a book of Sunan and offered critiques and endorsements of narrators (al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl).”