Abu al-Abbas ibn al-Nahhas al-Misri

Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Isa ibn al-Jarrah, Abu al-Abbas ibn al-Nahhas al-Rab'i of Egypt, the hafiz, has an entry in Ibn Asakir's Tarikh Dimashq because he heard hadith there. In Egypt he heard Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sulayman, Abu Bakr ibn Zabban, Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Badr ibn al-Naffah and others; in Damascus Abu al-Hasan ibn Jawsa and Makhul of Beirut; and he heard Abu Aruba al-Harrani, Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud, Ibn Abi Hatim, Abu al-Abbas al-Daghuli and others; he settled in Nishapur and died there. ^{2 3} Al-Hakim, Abu Nu'aym al-Isbahani, Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami, Abu Hazim al-Abdawi, Abu Uthman al-Bahiri and others narrated from him. ³

Ibn Asakir quotes al-Hakim: he wrote down hadith in his own country, the Hijaz, Syria, the two Iraqs, Khuzistan, Isfahan and the Jibal; he came to Abu Nu'aym in Jurjan in 319, went down from there to Juwayn, then met the shaykhs of Nishapur and went out to Sarakhs to write from al-Daghuli; his first hearing in his own country was in 305; he stayed for a time with Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Hatim and heard much from him, but everything he had heard in Iraq, the Hijaz and Syria was lost. ^{4 5} He taught in Nishapur for years by dictation and reading, living there from 321 until Saturday, the last day of Dhu al-Qa'da 376, and he told al-Hakim he was eighty-five. ⁵

Al-Hakim relates that he heard the shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Saffar of Isfahan praying in his mosque with his palms raised: Lord, You know that Abu al-Abbas al-Misri wronged me, betrayed me and kept back more than five hundred fascicles of my originals — let him have no benefit from them and no blessing in them. He explains the cause: Abu al-Abbas, who was al-Saffar's copyist, told him that Abu al-Abbas al-Asamm would not hand over al-Saffar's record of hearing in al-Thawri's al-Jami' unless he paid five dinars; al-Saffar sold something from his house and paid, Ibn al-Nahhas took the money and brought the book, and when the two shaykhs learned the truth they prayed against him. ⁵ Al-Hakim says he then went to the jurist Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Hamid until Abu Bakr al-Sawi the copyist was put in Ibn al-Nahhas's place, so that people could benefit from what remained of al-Saffar's books; he tells the story, he says, so that students take warning and do not treat shaykhs lightly, for Abu al-Abbas's standing in this craft had been of the highest, yet his learning was lost and his end was bad. ⁶

In another report al-Hakim says: Abu al-Abbas al-Misri was a hafiz of long-standing travel and great zeal for learning; when he was needed, after his early records had been lost, he narrated from memory hadiths he said he knew; in most of his learned exchanges he aimed at the truth, and when we saw his books after his death we found nothing but good. ⁶