He gained mastery of Arabic under the imam and hadith master Abū Ubayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām. He studied poetry and literature under the poet and scholar Mahmūd ibn al-Hasan al-Warrāq. He was trained in history, biography, and historical reports under Imam Muhammad ibn Saʿd, al-Wāqidī’s scribe and the author of The Major Classes, and under the imam and hadith master Abū Hassān al-Ziyādī, al-Hasan ibn Uthmān al-Baghdādī.

As for asceticism, heart-softening admonitions, and hadith transmission, he was a master without peer in these fields and distinguished himself especially by the sheer number of works he authored on them. Hadith compilations and the works of spiritual masters therefore took particular care to cite reports transmitted through him, owing to the subject matter of his narrations and his inclusion of their chains of transmission. Thus, in his book The Adornment of the Saints and the Classes of the Pure, the hadith master Abū Nuʿaym al-Asbahānī cited many narrations through him. Likewise, in The Gift of the Godfearing Masters: A Commentary on The Revival of the Religious Sciences, Imam Sayyid Muhammad Murtadā al-Zabīdī made a point of quoting from Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s works on every subject he addressed, as becomes evident through careful examination.

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s early pursuit of knowledge, which began when he was still at the age of discernment, together with his lofty ambition and earnest diligence in learning, contributed greatly to the elevated chains of transmission he possessed and the abundance of his narrations. In Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s biography in Tahdhīb al-Kamāl, 2/736, the hadith master al-Mizzī listed 119 of his teachers. Al-Dhahabī, offering only an abridged list in The Lives of the Eminent, 13/397, named 94 teachers. Yet his book Silence and the Etiquette of the Tongue alone contains narrations from 215 teachers!