Ibn al-Dubaythī transmitted from him and said (1): “He had a sound grasp of grammar and lexicography and a familiarity with hadith. In jurisprudence he followed the school of Mālik. He used to claim that he had committed the entire Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim to memory and that he had recited it from memory to a shaykh in the Maghrib, and he laid claim to many other things besides.”

Ibn ʿUnayn lampooned him in verse:

“Diḥya left no progeny—so why do you claim
kinship with him through brazen slander and lies?
Nothing universally accepted among the people remains
except that you belong, without doubt, to the tribe of Kalb.”

I say: This man possessed multiple skills, breadth of learning, and a strong hand in language, yet he was weak in hadith.

Ibn Masdī said: “I saw in his own handwriting that before the year 570 AH he had heard hadith from a group that included Abū Bakr ibn Khalīl, al-Lawātī, and Ibn Ḥunayn. This is not disputed. He went on listening until he even took from his peers and amassed what others had not.”

Al-Ḍiyāʾ said: “I met him in Isfahan, but I did not study under him, and his state did not please me; he was much given to attacking the leading scholars.”

Ibrāhīm al-Sanhūrī informed me in Isfahan that he (Ibn Diḥya) had entered the Maghrib and that the Maghribī shaykhs had written reports criticizing and weakening him.

Al-Ḍiyāʾ added: “I myself observed more than one thing that confirms this.”

Ibn Nuqṭah (2) said: “He was described as knowledgeable and virtuous—though I never met him—but he used to claim things that had no basis. Abū al-Qāsim ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, a trustworthy man, told me that he stayed…"