3 — Ahmad ibn Kāmil ibn Khalaf, Abū Bakr al-Baghdādī (1), narrated from Ibn al-Jahm al-Samarī, Muhammad al-Wāsitī, Ibn Sad al-Awfī, and their peers. Al-Dāraqutnī, al-Hākim, and others narrated from him. He was a scholar of legal rulings, Quranic sciences, poetry, and history, and he served as judge of Kufa. He died in 350 AH at the age of ninety.

4 — Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn al-Abbās ibn Mujāhid al-Tamīmī, the hadith master Abū Bakr Ibn Mujāhid al-Baghdādī (2), was the leading authority in the discipline of Quranic recitation and the first to designate the seven Quranic readings. He was born in 245 AH. His fame spread far and wide, and he became renowned. He surpassed his peers in devotion, retentiveness, and goodness. No master of Quranic recitation was known to have more students than he. His teaching circle included eighty-four deputies who heard students recite. He died in 324 AH.

5 — Sulaymān ibn Ahmad ibn Ayyūb al-Lakhmī, Abū al-Qāsim al-Tabarānī, the trustworthy hadith master (3) and author of the three Hadith Compendia, was born in the city of Acre in Safar 260 AH. He spent sixteen years traveling and meeting hadith transmitters, collected hadith, authored works, and lived a very long life. He settled in Isfahan and remained there until he died on Saturday, with two nights remaining of Dhū al-Qadah, in 360 AH. He was buried near the grave of Hamamah al-Dawsī, a Companion of the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. His nisbah derives from Tiberias.

6 — Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Jafar ibn Khudhyān al-Turkī, the learned emir, Abū