I also asked him about a man who said, “If I part company with my debtor, whatever he owes me shall be for the poor.” He replied, “It amounts to nothing.”
I further enquired about exchanging ṣufr (brass) for iron on deferred terms; he ruled that it may be conducted on credit.
Mughira ibn Miqsam said: I told Ibrahim, “Hammad has taken his seat and begun issuing legal rulings.” He answered, “Why should he not? He has questioned me about matters ten times more than you have ever asked me!”
Shuʿbah related: I heard al-Hakam say, “And who among the people of Kufah is the equal of Hammad?”
Abu Ishaq al-Shaybani declared, “Hammad ibn Abi Sulayman is more learned in jurisprudence than al-Shaʿbi; I have never seen anyone more versed in the Law than Hammad!”
Shuʿbah also said, “Hammad was truthful of tongue yet had little retention of hadith.”
Al-Nasaʾi judged him to be “reliable, though a Murjiʾite.”
Abu Hatim al-Razi observed, “He is sound in fiqh, but when it comes to the transmitted reports he becomes confused.”
Ahmad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-ʿIjli remarked, “He was the most knowledgeable in law among Ibrahim’s companions, though a fainting spell(1) would sometimes overtake him while he was narrating.”
It has reached us that Hammad enjoyed ample worldly means: during Ramadan he would provide the fast-breaking meal for five hundred people, and after the ʿId he would give each of them one hundred dirhams.
His narrations appear in the Sunan compilations; al-Bukhari did not transmit from him, and Muslim recorded only a single hadith of his, coupled with another narrator.
No weight should be given to what Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyash reported from al-Aʿmash, who said, “Hammad—who was not reliable—related to me from Ibrahim….” In another wording he said, “We did not use to rely on his hadith.”
Abu Bakr also transmitted from Mughira that when something was mentioned to him on Hammad’s authority, he replied, “He has lied.”
Yusuf ibn Musa said: Jarir narrated to us from Mughira, who said: “Hammad ibn Abi …”
(1) A sudden swoon or fainting fit.