and Abū Saʿd al-Mālīnī, al-Ḥasan b. Rāmin, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbdkawayh, Hamzah b. Yūsuf al-Sahmī, Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. al-ʿĀlī, and others.

The ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir said: “He was trustworthy, though a trace of grammatical awkwardness is noticeable in him.”

Hamzah b. Yūsuf (1) said: “I asked al-Dāraquṭnī to compose a book on weak narrators. He replied, ‘Do you not already have the book of Ibn ʿAdī?’ I said, ‘Indeed I do.’ He answered, ‘That is sufficient; nothing needs to be added to it.’”

It has reached me that Ibn ʿAdī also produced a work entitled al-Intiṣār, arranged according to the chapters of al-Mukhtaṣar by al-Muzanī.

Hamzah al-Sahmī further said: “Ibn ʿAdī was a precise ḥāfiẓ; in his time no one equaled him. He alone possessed certain ḥadith, some of which he bestowed upon his two sons ʿAdī and Abū Zurʿah, so they alone transmitted them from him.”

Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīlī remarked: “Abū Aḥmad was unparalleled in memorization and stature. I asked ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad the ḥāfiẓ, who said, ‘The button of Ibn ʿAdī’s shirt is more reliable than ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Qāniʿ.’”

Al-Khalīlī also said: “I heard Aḥmad b. Abī Muslim the ḥāfiẓ declare, ‘I have never seen anyone like Abū Aḥmad b. ʿAdī—so how could there be anyone above him in memorization?!’ This Aḥmad had met al-Ṭabarānī and Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim, and he told me, ‘The memorization of those men was forced, whereas that of Ibn ʿAdī was innate.’”

His Muʿjam lists more than one thousand shaykhs.

Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī said: “Ibn ʿAdī is a ḥāfiẓ of no small merit.”

I say: In al-Kāmil he mentions every narrator about whom even the slightest criticism has been voiced—even if that narrator appears in the two Ṣaḥīḥs—but he defends him whenever possible, and in the entry he cites a hadith