He was born in 355 AH and received the Musnad of Imām Aḥmad from Abū Bakr ibn Mālik al-Qaṭīʿī, who narrated it from ʿAbd Allāh, the son of Imām Aḥmad, on the authority of his father. He also learned ḥadīth from Abū Muḥammad ibn Māsi, Ibn Shāhīn, al-Dāraqutnī, and many others. He was pious and upright.

Al-Khaṭīb (1) states that his audition of Aḥmad’s Musnad from al-Qaṭīʿī was sound, though he later inserted his own name in a few fascicles.

Ibn al-Jawzī said: “This is no flaw [in his audition], for once his hearing is verified he may add his name where the scribe overlooked it. It is astonishing that a shaykh is allowed to say, ‘So-and-so informed me,’ though he never heard from him, yet is not allowed to insert his own name in material whose audition is confirmed. Al-Khaṭīb, may Allah Most High have mercy on him, burdened him with criticisms that were unnecessary.” (2)

ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad Abū al-Ḥasan, known as al-Shāshī (3) al-Baghdādī, settled in Basra, where he and his uncle seized control of the city and its people. He practiced assorted tricks to suggest that he possessed spiritual states and unveilings, but he was a lying libertine—may Allah disgrace him and his uncle. Moreover, he was a vile Rāfiḍī and a Qarmaṭī—may Allah not multiply his likes among mankind. He died this year, praise be to Allah.

The judge Abū Jaʿfar al-Simnānī (4)—Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qāḍī—was one of the theologians who followed the method of Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī. He heard ḥadīth from al-Dāraqutnī and others, was learned, virtuous, and generous, and served as qāḍī of Mosul. He maintained in his house a circle for debate and died, after losing his sight, in Mosul while still its judge, this year in Rabīʿ al-Awwal, at the age of eighty-five.

[Then the year 445 AH began.]

In it: hostility, fighting, and arson flared anew between the Rāfiḍites and the Sunnis, and the situation intensified and grew worse.

News arrived that al-Muʿizz the Fāṭimid intended to march upon Iraq.

Also in it: word reached King Ṭughrul Beg that Shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī was saying such-and-such—matters the king rejected as incompatible with religion and the Sunnah—so he ordered that the shaykh be cursed, and the people of Naysābūr openly declared anyone who professed those views to be an unbeliever.