Sulayman ibn Ahmad al-Tabarani

Abu'l-Qasim Sulayman b. Ahmad b. Ayyub b. Mutayr al-Lakhmi al-Tabarani, the hafiz, musnad of the age and of the horizons; his first hearing was in 273 at Tiberias, to which he is ascribed, then he travelled to Jerusalem in 274 and to Caesarea in 275 where he heard the companions of al-Firyabi, then on to Homs, Jabala and the cities of Syria; he made the hajj, entered Yemen, returned to Egypt, then travelled to Iraq, Isfahan and Fars — Ibn Khallikan counted a thousand shaykhs for him. ¹

His are the three Mu'jams — the Great, the Middle and the Small — the most famous of his books; Ibn Nasir al-Din called him musnad of the horizons, and he used to say of the Middle one: "it is my soul, for I toiled over it"; he settled at Isfahan and died there. ¹