In that same year—and again in the month of Tishrīn—throat and windpipe ailments spread widely among the people, and sudden death became frequent. A thief, for instance, broke a hole through a wall to burgle a house and died while still inside the breach; a judge donned the ceremonial robe of office to go out and adjudicate, slipped on one shoe, and died before he could put on the other.

[Among the notable figures who died that year]

Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan (1), Abū Hurayrah al-ʿAdawī (2). He served as the mustamli for the shaykhs, recorded hadith from Abū Muslim al-Kajji and others, and was deemed trustworthy. He died in Rabīʿ al-Awwal (3) of that year.

Al-Ḥasan ibn Khalaf ibn Shādhān (4), Abū ʿAlī al-Wāsiṭī. He transmitted hadith from Isḥāq al-Azraq, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, and others. Al-Bukhārī cites him in his Ṣaḥīḥ. He passed away this same year—so I found his entry for this year in Al-Muntaẓam of Abū al-Faraj ibn al-Jawzī (5).

Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm (6) Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn Yūsuf ibn Maʿqil ibn Sinān ibn ʿAbd Allāh, an Umayyad client, known as Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm.

He was born in 247 AH. He saw al-Dhuhli yet did not hear hadith from him. His father took him on travels to Isfahan, Mecca, Egypt, Syria, al-Jazīrah, Baghdad, and other lands, where he heard extensively from large gatherings. He returned to Khurāsān at the age of thirty, already a leading traditionist. Deafness then befell him and became so complete that he could not hear the braying of a donkey. He served as the mu’adhdhin in his mosque for seventy years and narrated hadith for seventy-six, allowing grandchildren to sit with their grandfathers at his lessons. He was trustworthy, truthful, and exact in all he had heard and continued to relate. A month before his death he lost his sight, yet still transmitted from memory fourteen hadiths and seven anecdotes. He died with one year remaining to complete a hundred.