When Ismāʿīl ibn Aḥmad died and the news reached al-Muktafī, he recited the couplet of Abū Nuwās (1):

Time will never produce their like again—
Alas, alas! their story is a marvel.

Al-Maʿmarī the ḥāfiẓ (2), author of ʿAmal al-Yawm wa’l-Laylah (The Deeds of Day and Night): Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Shabīb, Abū ʿAlī al-Maʿmarī, the ḥāfiẓ. He travelled widely, studied under many shaykhs, and met a great number of scholars, among them ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn. His own students included Ibn Ṣāʿid, al-Najjād, and al-Khaldī. An ocean of knowledge and a master memoriser of hadith, he was truthful and reliable. Because he was over eighty, his teeth had been clasped with gold. He was first kunya-ed Abū al-Qāsim, then Abū ʿAlī. He held the judgeship of al-Birtī over the palace (3) and its surrounding districts.

He was called al-Maʿmarī through his mother, Umm al-Ḥasan bint Sufyān ibn Abī Sufyān, a disciple of Maʿmar ibn Rāshid. He died on the night of Friday, eleven days remained of Muḥarram in this same year.

ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Shuʿayb (4): [Abū Shuʿayb’s name] (5) is ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan—Abū Shuʿayb al-Umawī al-Ḥarrānī, the tutor, a hadith scholar born to a hadith scholar. Born in 206 AH, he heard hadith from his father, his grandfather, ʿAffān ibn Muslim, and Abū Khaythamah. He was truthful, trustworthy, and dependable. He died in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of this year.

ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Muktafī bi-Allāh ibn al-Muʿtaḍid: his biography has already been mentioned earlier under this year.

Abū Jaʿfar al-Tirmidhī (6): Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr, Abū Jaʿfar al-Tirmidhī, the Shāfiʿī jurist. He was a man of learning and asceticism.

Al-Dāraquṭnī said (7): “He is trustworthy, reliable, a devoted worshipper.”

Qāḍī Aḥmad ibn Kāmil said (8): “Among the followers of al-Shāfiʿī in Iraq, none was more eminent or more scrupulously pious than he.”