Al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghanī ibn Nuqṭa said in his Taqyīd: “I have copied from the handwriting of Abū ʿĀmir Muḥammad ibn Saʿdūn al-ʿAbdarī, the ḥāfiẓ: Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nasāʾī died at al-Ramla (1), a city in Palestine, on Monday, thirteen nights having passed of Ṣafar in 303 AH, and he was buried in Bayt al-Maqdis.”

Ibn Khallikān relates in al-Wafayāt that he passed away in Shaʿbān of that same year, and that he compiled al-Khaṣāʾiṣ on the merits of ʿAlī and the Family of the Prophet because, when he entered Damascus in 302 AH, he found its people harboring aversion toward ʿAlī. They asked him about Muʿāwiyah; he answered as he did, so they struck him in the testicles, and he died (2).

Ibn Yūnus and Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī likewise stated that he died in Palestine in Ṣafar of that year.

According to his own statement—may Allah have mercy on him—al-Nasāʾī was born in either 215 or 214 AH, making his lifespan eighty-eight years (3).

Al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān (4) ibn ʿĀmir ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Nuʿmān ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Abū al-ʿAbbās, al-Shaybānī al-Nasawī, was the ḥadith scholar of Khurāsān, the one to whom people would drive their camels in pursuit of ḥadith and fiqh. He travelled through distant lands, studied jurisprudence under Abū Thawr (5) and issued legal opinions according to his school, and he learned literature from the students of al-Naḍr ibn Shumayl (6). In Khurāsān, scholarly journeys converged upon him.

Among the remarkable events that befell him is the following: he and a group of his companions were in Egypt on their quest for ḥadith. Their means ran out, and for three days they ate nothing, finding nothing to sell for food. Need pressed them to contemplate begging, yet their souls recoiled from it and refused completely, though dire necessity compelled them toward it. They therefore cast lots among themselves to determine who would undertake this task, and the lot fell to al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān.