and, while in al-Andalus, he likewise received narrations from Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar ibn Dilhāth; in Mecca from the muhadditha Karīma (1) al-Marwaziyya; in Egypt again from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ḍarrāb and Ibn Baqāʾ al-Warrāq; in Baghdad from ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn al-Maʾmūn, Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Muhtadī bi-Allah, Abū Muḥammad ibn Hazār-Marda, and Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima; and in Wāsiṭ from the eminent linguist Abū Ghālib ibn Bishrān al-Lughawī. He transmitted extensively from the students of Abū Ṭāhir al-Mukhalliṣ, then from the circle of Abū ʿUmar ibn Mahdī, until he finally took notes from the disciples of Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī.
He gathered traditions, authored works, and produced his Harmony Between the Two Ṣaḥīḥs, arranging it in the finest order (2). He eventually settled in Baghdad, and his first scholarly journey began in the year 448 AH.
(1) Its biography has already been given in vol. 18, no. 110.
(2) This work has not yet been printed. In it the author inserted additional phrases and completions that are absent from the two standard recensions, borrowing them from the compilers of the mustakhraj collections on the Two Sahihs and explicitly pointing them out. In the middle of his introduction he writes: “We may also add brief passages that have come to our attention in the books of Abu l-Hasan al-Darqutni, Abu Bakr al-Ismaili, Abu Bakr al-Khuzaimi—i.e. al-Barqani—, Abu Masud al-Dimashqi, and other hadith masters who concentrated on the Sahih, whenever the material concerns the two books, whether it be a remark on purpose, the completion of an omission, an explanatory addition, the clarification of a name or lineage, a comment on an isnad (chain of transmission), or the tracking of an error.”
Al-Hafiz Ibn Hajar comments: “In the portions of his book that I have examined, whenever he cites a textual addition he attributes it to the transmitter among the mustakhraj scholars or others. If he ascribes it to someone who actually produced a mustakhraj, he accepts it; if he traces it to one who did not, he generally critiques it. Sometimes he quotes the hadith from both Sahihs, or from one of them, and then says: ‘So-and-so added such-and-such.’ At other times he presents the hadith and the addition in a single continuous passage, then remarks: ‘Al-Bukhari limited himself to such-and-such, while al-Ismaili added such-and-such.’
“Anyone who thinks he inserted those extra passages into the body of the Shaykhayn’s (Bukhari and Muslim’s) hadiths without clear indication or distinction is mistaken.
“It is most likely that Ibn al-Athir, in Jamiʿ al-usul—who relied on al-Humaydi’s work for what is in the Two Sahihs—reproduces from it only what is expressly attributed therein to both Shaykhayn or to one of them, and omits what al-Humaydi added from the mustakhraj books.”