Ibn Manda

Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad bin Isḥāq Ibn Manda (d. 395/1004–5) was an eminent Isfahani Sunni Hadith scholar of Persian origin.
Overview of the Ibn Manda Family.
In classical "hadīth" literature, the name "Ibn Manda" may refer to various individuals from a famous Iṣfahānī family dynasty of "ḥadīt̲h̲" scholars and historians which was active for nearly three centuries. The family descended from a Sassanian official, D̲j̲ahārbuk̲h̲t, said to have become a Muslim at the time of the Islamic Conquest of Persia, while the man after whom the family was named was Ibrāhīm (Manda) b. al-Walīd b. Sanda b. Buṭṭa b. Ustandār al-Fērōzān b. D̲j̲ahārbuk̲h̲t. His death is placed during the caliphate of al-Mutasim. His son, Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā, is counted as the first prominent scholar in the family. Two sons of Yahya are known, Abd al-Rahmān (d. 320/932) and Muhammad (d. 301/913-14). Muhammad's son Ishāq (d. 341/953) was the father of the most renowned member of the family, Abu ‘Abdullāh Muhammad b. Ishāq Ibn Manda, who was born in 310/922.
Abū 'Abdullāh Ibn Mandah was focussed on attaining religious education since his childhood and went on to receive instructions from venerable scholars as Ja'fer b. Muhammad ibn Musa `Alawi, Ahmad b. Zakariyya Maqdisi, `Abdullah b. Ahmad b. Hanbal and Ibn Hibban (d. 965). His travels are said to have spanned a period of thirty years and took him to places such as Marw, Bukhara, Egypt, Tarāblus, Nisapur and Mecca. He collected an extraordinary amount of "hadith" in his travels during which he supposedly encountered 1,700 "shuyūkh" (teachers) and returned to Isfahān with roughly forty loads of books. The Imām Abu Ishāq ibn Hamzah commented that he did not find a peer among scholars of the stature of Ibn Mandah. The Sheikh of Herat, Isma`il Ansari (d. 375 A.H) said that Ibn Mandah was a chieftain of his age.
Legacy.
He married late in life and had four sons, ‘Abdallah (d. 1070), ‘Abdal-Rahmān (d. 1078), ‘Abdal-Wahhāb (d. 475/1082) and the little known ‘Abdal-Rahīm. Some of Abū Abdullāh's notable students were Al-Hakim Nishapuri and Ibn Mardaway (Mardūya) (323-410/935-1019). Abu-Abdullāh died in Dhul-Hijja in 395 A.H (September 1005 CE). What follows is a list of some of the individual scholars associated with the Ibn Manda family:
Academic Works.
His academic publications were primarily concerned history, biography and hadīth. He wrote on the history (seerah) of the Prophet Muhammad and, like his grandson, Yahyā b. ‘Abdal-Wahhāb, composed a "History of Isfahan". Of his works there survive his comments on certain verses of the Quran and some Prophetic traditions, under the title of "ar-Radd ' ala al-Jahmiyya" (Refutation of the Jahmites), but it may be noted that his son, ‘Abdal-Rahmān, is credited with a similar if, apparently different work. Other additional works include "at-Tawhīd wa-Ma’rifat Asmā’ Allah" and parts of his "Ma’rifat al-sahāba", which are both preserved in Damascus, and a treatise on "The men around Muhammad who lived 120 years’.
Dispute with Abu Nu'aym.
Ibn Manda is reported to have been involved in a vicious dispute with his fellow ‘"Muhaddith" of the Age" and hometown rival, Abu Nu’aym al-Isfahani (d. 1039), due to their differences in "madhhab" and theological contentions. He denounced Abu Nu’aym on account of his supposed leanings toward "kalām" and banished him from the great congregational mosque of Isfahān, which was then dominated by Ibn Manda's Hanbali faction. Nevertheless, Ibn Manda taught "hadīth" to, and had an extremely close teacher-pupil relationship with, Abū Mansur Ma’mar ibn Ahmad al-Isfahānī (d. 1027), who was a prominent Hanbali Sufi and contemporary of Abu Nu’aym in Isfahan who praised Ibn Manda as the model scholar of his age.