He also wrote al-Sunnah, Faḍāʾil al-Aʿmāl, and al-Sunnah al-Kabīr; several of his works have come down to us.
He was an authority in hadith, possessed of lofty chains. He heard from Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim and his contemporaries, met in Kūfah Abū ʿUmar al-Qaṭṭāt, and in Basra Abū Khalīfah. He died in 369 AH, while in his nineties.
285 – The printed editions read “Abā ʿAmro.” The correction follows the manuscript and the biographical sources. Abū ʿUmar al-Qaṭṭāt’s name is Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Kūfī; he is weak and died in 300 AH. See Tārīkh 2/129–130 and Lisān.
128 – The scholar Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī (277–371 AH)
302 – From Ḥamzah ibn Yūsuf al-Ḥāfiẓ: Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ismāʿīlī informed us, in his book Iʿtiqād al-Sunnah, saying:
“Know—may Allah have mercy on you—that the creed of the people of hadith, the Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, is to affirm Allah, His angels, His Books and His Messengers, and to accept whatever Allah Himself has spoken and whatever has been authentically transmitted from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, never deviating from what has come. They hold that Allah, exalted be He, is invoked by His Most Beautiful Names and described by His attributes—those He ascribed to Himself and those His Prophet ascribed to Him. He created Adam with His own hand, and His two hands are outstretched—without inquiring into how; and He rose over the Throne—again without inquiring into how, for the matter reaches only as far as His statement that He rose over the Throne, and He did not explain the manner.”