…Thus Ibn al-Ushari’s remark, “It is like a pillar”—meaning that the report is as firmly established as a pillar—is a flimsy, utterly untenable claim that betrays his ignorance of the science of *jarh wa-taʿdil* (narrator criticism and accreditation), the discipline that enables one to sift reports and distinguish the sound from the weak. Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 2/192, adds: When the reciter reached the hadith of Umm al-Tufayl and the hadith of Ibn Abbas, the reader said, “and he mentioned the hadith,” whereupon Ibn al-Ushari told him, “Recite the hadith exactly as it is, for the transmitters of these two reports are as solid as these pillars.” (*) Al-Ansab 3/38-39; Al-Lubab 1/211; Al-ʿIbar 3/217; Al-Wafi bi-l-wafayat 3/10; Hasan al-Muḥadara 1/515; Shadharat al-Dhahab 3/278. He was also called Ibn al-Tarjumān—either after his grandfather or because he served as the interpreter of Sayf al-Dawla (Al-Ansab). (1) Al-Ansab and Al-Lubab both read: Abu al-Hasan. (2) Al-Lubab mis-prints the name as: al-Hasan. (3) Al-Samʿani explains that the nisba Ḥundari is pronounced with a ḍamma on the ha and dal, with a quiescent nun between them, and ends with ra; it refers to Handar, which he believed to be a village near ʿAsqalan in greater Syria. Yaqut confirms this spelling as Handara, adding a final ta. This Abu Bakr is the brother of ʿAli mentioned below. (4) A nisba deriving from the minting of silver and gold coins. (5) Ibn al-Athir states that the nisba Malini refers to Malin (the people of Herat say: Malan). The person intended is Abu Saʿd Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Ansari al-Malini, the Sufi who died in 412/1021; his biography appeared earlier in volume 17, no. 183.