from his own autograph—the ancient original—in order to guard against the fabrications and alterations introduced by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Yūsufī (1). When the hadith scholars made this clear to the preacher, he revoked everything he had transmitted on Muḥammad’s authority and extracted that Mashyakha anew from his own manuscripts.
Those who narrated from him include: Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ruhāwī, Shaykh Muwaffaq al-Dīn ʿAbd Allah, al-Bahāʾ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, the judge Yūsuf ibn Shaddād, Hibat Allah ibn Bāṭīsh, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn al-Qaṭīʿī, Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn al-Athīr, al-Muwaffaq Yaʿīsh ibn ʿAlī the grammarian, ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-Turābī, Abū al-Khayr Iyās al-Shahrazūrī, Ibrāhīm ibn Yūsuf ibn Khutta al-Mawṣilī, and others besides them.
Ibn Qudāmah said, “He was a fine shaykh; we saw nothing from him but good.”
Ibn al-Najjār remarked, “He was born in Baghdad and studied fiqh and uṣūl under al-Ilkiyā Abū al-Ḥasan al-Harrāsī and Abū Bakr al-Shāshī, and literature under Abū Zakariyyā al-Tabrīzī and Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī.”
(1) The Yusufi in question died in 568 / 1172. Ibn al-Dubaythi writes in his biography: “He was not reliable in either what he reported or what he conveyed. He was notorious for forging certificates of audition (*samaʿāt*) and for inserting into his teachers’ hadith items they had never heard. By doing so he damaged the standing of several scholars; people therefore abandoned their hadith, and what was sound in their transmissions became mixed with what was defective through his copying and public recitations.
I heard Abu al-Qasim Tamim b. Ahmad b. al-Bandaniji in Baghdad say: ‘Shaykh Abu al-Fadl ʿAbd Allah b. Ahmad b. al-Tusi, preacher of Mosul, is trustworthy and his auditions from a number of scholars are sound. Yet Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Khaliq b. Yusuf interpolated into his hadith material he had never actually heard. He had travelled to Abu al-Fadl, treated him courteously, and presented him with fascicles in which he claimed to have recorded his auditions from several of the shaykh’s own teachers, such as … . Since Abu al-Fadl had indeed heard from those teachers, he accepted the fascicles and transmitted from them, relying on Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Khaliq’s word and thinking well of him. When Muhammad b. Yusuf’s lies became known and people began to criticize him and the material related by Abu al-Fadl, the original fascicles that he had brought to Baghdad—and from which he claimed to have copied—were sought, but could not be found. The affair became public; people abandoned his hadith and ceased to value his transmissions. Abu al-Fadl in turn stopped relating anything about which he had doubts and warned others against transmitting it.’ ” Source: Ibn al-Dubaythi, Dhayl Tarikh Madinat al-Salam, fol. 72 (Ms. Shahid ʿAli).