72 – al-Qāsim ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dimashqī * (4)
The imam and leading hadith scholar of Damascus.
He was Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dimashqī, a client of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah the Umayyad. He is the same al-Qāsim ibn Abī al-Qāsim.
He frequently transmits mursal reports from the early Companions such as ʿAlī, Tamīm al-Dārī, and Ibn Masʿūd.
He also narrates from Abū Hurayrah, Faḍālah ibn ʿUbayd, Muʿāwiyah, Abū Umāmah, and several others.
Those who reported from him include Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥārith al-Dhimārī, Thawr ibn Yazīd, ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Zabr, Muʿāwiyah ibn Ṣāliḥ, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yazīd ibn Jābir, and many others.
Ibn Saʿd said: “He was the client of the Mother of the Believers Umm Ḥabībah.” Others said: “He was the client of Muʿāwiyah.”
He left behind a large body of hadith, and some of the Syrian scholars relate that al-Qāsim met forty veterans of Badr.
Al-Bukhārī recorded in his History (1) that he heard [directly from] ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd, but this is one of al-Bukhārī’s slips.
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said: “Reliable.”
Ibn Shābūr (2) narrated from Yaḥyā al-Dhimārī: “I heard al-Qāsim Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān say, ‘I met one hundred Companions.’”
Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah related from ʿUrwah ibn Ruwaym, from al-Qāsim Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who said: “Salmān al-Fārisī came to us in Damascus.”
I add: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal rejected this report, saying, “How could he have met him when he was only a client of Khālid ibn Yazīd?”