Al-Khaṭīb, in his History (1), relates: al-Azharī told me:

“When Ibn al-Bayyiʿ once arrived in Baghdad, long ago, he said, ‘I have been told that your ḥāfiẓ—meaning al-Dāraquṭnī—has extracted five hundred fascicles for a single shaykh. Let me see some of them.’

Several fascicles were brought to him, among them those al-Dāraquṭnī had compiled for Abū Isḥāq al-Ṭabarī. He opened the very first ḥadith in the first fascicle and found it transmitted by ʿAṭiyyah al-ʿAwfī. He remarked, ‘He has begun with a weak shaykh,’ flung the fascicle aside, and did not look at the rest.

Ibn Ṭāhir said: I asked the ḥāfiẓ Saʿd b. ʿAlī about four contemporaries: which of them had the strongest memory?

He replied, ‘Who are they?’

I said, ‘al-Dāraquṭnī, ʿAbd al-Ghanī, Ibn Mandah, and al-Ḥākim.’

He said, ‘As for al-Dāraquṭnī, he is the most knowledgeable of hidden defects; as for ʿAbd al-Ghanī, he knows genealogies best; as for Ibn Mandah, he possesses the largest collection of ḥadith together with thorough expertise; and as for al-Ḥākim, he is the finest author (2).’

Aḥmad b. Salāmah informed me, from Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Ṭarsūsī, from Ibn Ṭāhir: that he asked Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Harawī about Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥākim, and he replied, ‘Trustworthy in ḥadith yet a vile Rāfiḍī (3).’

I say: Certainly not—he is no Rāfiḍī, though he does incline toward Shīʿism (4).

Ibn Ṭāhir said: He was intensely partisan toward the Shīʿah in secret, and he