ʿĀṣim ibn Abī al-Najūd, whereupon he said, “Abū Bakr, on what basis do you set aside this report from ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him): ‘The best of this community after its Prophet are Abū Bakr and ʿUmar’? And do you know who occupies the third place?”

ʿĀṣim went on, “We do not set it aside; rather, he meant ʿUthmān. He was too virtuous to praise himself.”

Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh said, “I entered upon ʿĀṣim while he was dying, and he recited, ‘Then they will be returned to Allah, their true Master’—pronouncing the initial rāʾ with a kasrah, which is the dialect of Hudhayl (1).”

Abū Hishām al-Rifāʿī related to us: Yaḥyā narrated to us; Abū Bakr narrated to us; he said, “I went in to see ʿĀṣim. He lost consciousness, then revived and recited the Almighty’s words, ‘Then they will be returned to Allah …’ to the end of the verse. He articulated the hamzah, and I realized that recitation was his very nature.”

I say: ʿĀṣim was reliable in recitation and truthful in hadith. He was declared trustworthy by Abū Zurʿah and others. Abū Ḥātim said, “His rank is that of truthfulness.” Al-Dāraquṭnī remarked, “His retention is somewhat deficient—meaning in hadith, not in the Qur’anic letters. At every age a scholar may be an imām in one discipline yet fall short in others.”

Similarly, his companion Ḥafṣ ibn Sulaymān was sound in recitation but weak in hadith, whereas al-Aʿmash was the reverse—strong in hadith yet soft in the letters. Al-Aʿmash does have a mode of reading preserved in the book al-Manhaj and elsewhere, but it does not reach the level of the Seven Readings, nor that of the readings of Yaʿqūb or Abū Jaʿfar—and Allah knows best.

Al-Nasāʾī said, “ʿĀṣim is not a ḥāfiẓ.”

ʿĀṣim died at the end of 127 AH. Ismāʿīl ibn Mujālid said he died in 128 AH.

I add: His narrations appear in the Six Books, though in the two Ṣaḥīḥs only as corroborating reports. This is the highest-isnād narration of ʿĀṣim that has reached me: between him and me stand seven transmitters.