Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar (1), Abū Bakr al-ʿAnbarī, was a cultured, winsome man of letters and an accomplished poet. Among his verses are:

I cast my gaze on Time and on its folk—one look was all I needed;
I understood it, I understood them, and I discerned my honour from my lowliness.
So I renounced the friend: I neither see him nor he sees me;
I spurned what lies in his hands—for beyond it lie the highest hopes.
They marvel at a combatant (2) who grants the farthest prize to the nearest,
And who slips through the throng—within the universe he has no equal (3).

Ibn al-Jawzī said: “He was once a Ṣūfī, then he left them and satirised them in odes that I have cited in Talbīs Iblīs. He died on Thursday, the twelfth of Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year.”

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rizq ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Yazīd ibn Khālid (4), Abū ’l-Ḥasan al-Bazzār, known as Ibn Rizqawayh.

Al-Khaṭīb said: “He was the first shaykh from whom I wrote, in 403 AH. He used to relate that he had studied jurisprudence according to the Shāfiʿī school. He was trustworthy, truthful, widely engaged in hearing and writing ḥadīth, sound in creed, of commendable persuasion, constant in reciting the Quran, and stern with the people of innovation. He remained devoted to ḥadīth for a very long time.

“He would say, ‘I love this world only for the remembrance of Allah, the recitation of the Quran, and my reading ḥadīth to you.’ One of the amirs once sent gold to the scholars; they all accepted it except him—he would not take a single coin.”

He died on Monday, the sixteenth of Jumādā al-Ūlā of this year, at the age of eighty-seven, and was buried near the cemetery of Maʿrūf al-Karkhī—may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (5), Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Naysābūrī.

He narrated from al-Aṣamm and others; the shaykhs of Baghdad—such as al-Azharī, al-ʿUsharī and their peers—transmitted from him, as did al-Bayhaqī and others.