Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid said, “He is a close friend of mine, a scholar versed in many disciplines who reached the rank of imamate without dispute. He has shown me numerous favors, both while travelling and while resident. He amassed what none of his peers managed to gather of books and abundant audition certificates. In compiling and writing he was truthful, and in his recitation he was trustworthy.
I (the author) add: He narrated only rarely, though he copied a great deal and produced written works. He would honor strangers, benefit them, and gift them individual fascicles. He was religious, God-fearing, and full of reverence; his merits were many. He brought together the miscellaneous narrations of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, which then circulated from him and were admired by scholars. Shaykhs selected material on the basis of his collection, and the al-Thaqafiyyāt are from his transmission.
He died in Jumādā al-Ūlā, 517 AH.
The last person to receive his licence (ijāza) was ʿAfīfa al-Farafāniyya.
Muḥammad ibn Makkī al-Ḥanbalī told us: “It was said that Abū Nuʿaym ibn al-Ḥaddād debated Shahardār ibn Shīrawayh. Abū Nuʿaym had stayed behind after Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād in order to hear Sahih Muslim from Abū al-Ḥasan al-Naysābūrī. He said to him, ‘Glory be to Allah! You left the ʿawālī (lofty-chained reports) with my father and busied yourself with the nawāzil (lower-chained ones)?!’
He replied, ‘Your father does not possess Sahih Muslim with a lofty chain.’
Abū Nuʿaym retorted, ‘Indeed he does. He holds the recension on which Abū Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ produced an edition, and in it are most of the ʿawālī. If you hear those from my father, it will be as though you heard them from ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī; if I wished, I could say it would be as though you heard some of them from al-Julūdī; and were I to claim it would be as though you heard them from Ibn Sufyān, I would not be lying—and, if I wished, I could even say it would be as though you heard them from Muslim himself.
He then added, ‘And within it are ḥadiths with chains even higher than these—once you hear them from my father…’”