al-Harrānī, who said: “Yaḥyā al-Bābluddī narrated to us; al-Awzāʿī narrated to us; Hārūn ibn Riyāb narrated to us:
‘Whoever disowns his lineage because he thinks it too mean, or falsely lays claim to another, has committed unbelief.’ (1)

Al-Khaṭīb (2) commented: “Everything he possessed from Ibn Mālik through al-Bābluddī is a single fascicle in which this report does not appear (3). He would often bring me traditions whose chains contained personal names with no tribal attribution. He would ask me about them, and I would supply the nisbah; he would then insert that into those traditions, attaching it to the names. I forbade him, but he would not desist (4).”

Abū Bakr ibn Nuqṭah said: “I wish al-Khaṭīb had identified in which Musnad the sections he excluded are found; had he done so, it would have been useful. We have already mentioned that the Musnads of Faḍālah ibn ʿUbayd and ʿAwf ibn Mālik were absent from Ibn al-Mudhhib’s copy, and likewise certain reports from the Musnad of Jābir were missing from his manuscript. Al-Harrānī transmitted them from al-Qaṭīʿī. If Ibn al-Mudhhib really used to append his own name, as alleged, he would have done so here as well. What is astonishing is that al-Khaṭīb refutes his own statement in practice, for he himself cited from him—within his compilations—material from Aḥmad’s Kitāb al-Zuhd (5).”

Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī told us; al-Hamadhānī told us; al-Silafī told us: “I asked Shujāʿ al-Dhuhlī about Ibn al-Mudhhib, and he said, ‘Our shaykh was stringent in transmitting ḥadith…’”