He lived an ascetic life and died at the age of 89 on the 24th of Ramadan 264/30 May 878 and was buried near Imam al-Shafi'i.
He wrote several works, his most famous one being his abridgement of Imam Shafi’i's al-Umm entitled Mukhtasar al-Muzani.
An abridgement has been done to this work a 150 years later by the great jurist known as Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni who authored a celebrated work entitled Nihayat al-Matlab fi Dirayat al-Madhhab and is considered the only known abridgement of Mukhtasar al-Muzani.
[3] He wrote several other works such as Sharh al-Sunnah, al-Jami’ al-Kabir, al-Saghir, al-Manthur, al-Targhib fi al-‘Ilm, al-Masa’il al-Mu’tabarah, and al-Watha’iq.
He is also the uncle of Abu Ja'far al-Tahawi, an important scholar and Imam of the Hanafi school.