—an excess that bred turmoil, endless wrangling and long-lasting headaches. The ḥadith folk then rushed at him with the “knives” of their pens, and the man was almost killed. (1)

I say: such people are not true students of ḥadith at all, but sinful ignoramuses. May Allah ward off their evil.

The ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir said: Shaykh Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Iṣbahānī reported from the elders of Isfahān whom he had met that when Sultan Maḥmūd ibn Subuktikīn seized Isfahān, he appointed a governor over it and departed. The townspeople rose against the governor and killed him. The sultan returned, guaranteed them safety until they felt secure, and then struck at them on a Friday while they were in the congregational mosque, executing a great many. Before that, they had barred the ḥāfiẓ Abū Nuʿaym from sitting in the mosque, so he was spared the fate that befell them, and that was counted among his marks of divine favor. (2)

Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī said: I heard ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Anmāṭī say: I saw, in Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb’s own handwriting, the following: “I asked Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-ʿAṭṭār, Abū Nuʿaym’s prompter, about the fascicle of Muḥammad ibn ʿĀṣim—how did you read it to Abū Nuʿaym, and how did you assess his audition of it?” He replied, “He handed me a volume and said, ‘This is my own hearing,’ so I read it to him.”

Al-Khaṭīb then remarked: “I have noticed a few matters in which Abū Nuʿaym shows leniency, among them that, in an ijāzah, he will write ‘He informed us’ without clarifying the manner.” (3)