who said:
“He had memorised the two Ṣaḥīḥs, and people ranked him above al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Mūsā in the matter of memorisation.” (1)

I say: Those who narrated from him include al-Ḥāfiẓ ʿAbd al-Ghanī and Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn.

Ibn al-Najjar added: “Our teacher Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥanbalī of Isfahān produced for me a written deposition concerning Abū al-Khayr. It carried the handwriting of Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl, Abū Naṣr al-Ghāzī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Naṣr al-Laftuwānī, and Kūtāh, and all of them attested that his transmissions are not admissible as proof, that his statement is not to be accepted, and that he is unreliable in his religion because of his bad conduct.”

I likewise read, in the hand of ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Khujandī, a question he posed to al-Ḥāfiẓ Abū Mūsā about the Baghdadi ijāzas granted to Masʿūd al-Thaqafī—namely al-Khaṭīb, Ibn al-Muhtadī Billāh, Ibn al-Maʾmūn, and the remainder of the ten (2) whose certificates were transmitted by ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Mūsā. Abū Mūsā referred him to certain locations that were sought out but not found, and people voiced their objections. He also asked him about the ijāzas of Ibn Hājar, whereupon Abū Mūsā wrote verbatim:

“Unsuspecting novices have been taken in by these ijāzas, wasting their time reading them while the claimant kept delaying their presentation, until—after a long interval—their falsehood was proven. Returning to the truth is the better course. Whoever has read to al-Raʾīs Masʿūd on the strength of these ijāzas has squandered his effort and dashed his hopes, and al-Raʾīs himself has borne witness to the invalidity of some of them.” (3)

Al-Ḍiyāʾ said: I heard Imām ʿAbd Allāh al-Jubbāʾī say: “Abū al-Khayr had memorised Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and would say: ‘Anyone who wants me to recite the chain of transmission should first read the text so that I may then recite it for him.’”