Husayn b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdurraḥmān b. Bakīr b. ʿAbdullah al-Sayrafī was a great ḥadīth ḥāfiẓ (memorizer). He heard ḥadīth from Ismāʿīl al-Ṣaffār, Ibn Sammāk, Najjād, Ḥaldī, and Abū Bakr al-Shāshī. Ibn Shāhin, Azharī, and Tanūhī also heard ḥadīth from him and transmitted them. According to Azharī's statement, he went to Husayn b. Aḥmad's place and saw large ḥadīth juzʾs (sections) before him. “When he recited a sanad (chain of transmission), he would recite it from memory. When he recited a matn (text), he would recite it from memory along with its sanad, and I saw this many times,” he said.
He recited all the ḥadīths he transmitted, with their sanads and matns, perfectly from memory as they were in his books.
He was a thiqa (reliable) rāwī (transmitter). Those who envied him spoke against him.
According to Ḥāṭib al-Baghdādī, Ibn Fawāris accused him of adding to the ḥadīths he heard from the ḥadīth masters, and of inserting some names in the sanad part of the ḥadīths, making maqṭūʿ (disconnected) ḥadīths appear muttasil (connected). He died in the month of Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that year at the age of seventy-one.