Zayd on the last day of his life, and he said, “I am going to relate to you a ḥadīth I have never transmitted before; I would hate to meet Allah without having narrated it:

‘I heard Ayyūb reporting from ʿIkrimah, who said, “Allah sent down the ambiguous verses of the Qur’an only in order to mislead by means of them.”’

I say: This is an unfortunate expression. Allah—exalted be He—revealed those verses so that He might guide the believers by them; He leads none astray through them except the defiantly immoral, as He has informed us in Sūrat al-Baqarah. (1)

Ibn Saʿd said: ʿIkrimah possessed extensive knowledge and numerous ḥadīths; he was an ocean without shore. Still, his reports are not used as proof, and people voice criticism of him.

Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Zubayrī said: ʿIkrimah espoused the doctrine of the Khārijites. The governor of Medina searched for him, so he hid with Dāwūd ibn al-Ḥuṣayn and died in his house.

I say: For that reason Dāwūd alone transmits from him certain reports that strike one as odd; many ḥadīth masters have counted those solitary narrations as objectionable, especially when they come only from transmitters such as Ibn Isḥāq and the like.

Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways narrated—from Mālik ibn Anas, from his father—that he said: “The biers of ʿIkrimah, the freedman of Ibn ʿAbbās, and of Kathīr ʿAzza were brought after the afternoon prayer, yet I am not aware of a single person in the mosque who even rose from his seated posture for them.”

Abū Dāwūd al-Sanji narrated—from al-Aṣmaʿī, from Ibn Abī al-Zinād—who said: “Kathīr and ʿIkrimah, the freedman of Ibn ʿAbbās, died on the same day. Someone other than al-Aṣmaʿī told me that the people attended Kathīr’s funeral but left ʿIkrimah’s unattended.”