The Shaykh has called me—pliant and keen to heed his word;
I give him a whole arm whenever he but points a finger.
And here I am: tomorrow I shall set out for his abode,
hastening to accomplish all that he has assigned to me.

Abū Saʿd al-Ismāʿīlī died suddenly in Jurjān during the month of Rabīʿ al-Ākhir. He was standing in the miḥrāb performing the Maghrib prayer, and when he recited, “You alone we worship and You alone we ask for help,” his soul departed. Thus he passed away—may Allah Most High have mercy upon him (1).

Muhammad ibn Ahmad (2) ibn Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Muhammad ibn Baḥīr (3), Abū ʿAmr al-Muzakkī, the ḥāfiẓ of Nīshāpūr, also known as al-Baḥīrī (4), travelled far and wide in pursuit of knowledge. He possessed a prodigious memory, was an excellent conversationalist, trustworthy, and precise. He narrated ḥadīth in Baghdad and elsewhere, and he died in Shaʿbān of this year at the age of sixty-three (5).

Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mandah (6)—the ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Mandah, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Isfahānī—belonged to a household renowned for ḥadīth and memorization. He journeyed to distant lands, heard a vast amount, and compiled works on history and on his teachers.

Abū al-ʿAbbās Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ said, “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mandah.” He died in Isfahān in Ṣafar of this year. May Allah, Exalted be He, have mercy on him and on us.

Then the year 397 A.H. began.

In that year Abū Rakuwa rose in rebellion against the ʿUbaydid ruler al-Ḥākim of Egypt.

In brief, this man was a descendant of Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān of the Umayyads; his name was al-Walīd. He was nicknamed Abū Rakuwa because of the small water-flask (rakuwa) he carried on his travels in the manner of the Ṣūfīs. He had studied ḥadīth in the Egyptian lands, then resided in Mecca, after that in Yemen, and later entered Syria. Throughout all of this he accepted the allegiance of whoever submitted to him, from among