Among those who narrated from him were: his brother Wahb, the storyteller—who had died long before him—his nephew ʿAqīl ibn Maʿqil, and ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Anas al-Ṣanʿānī.
Yahya ibn Maʿin and others declared him reliable.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal said: “He used to take part in military expeditions and would buy books for his brother. He sat with Abu Hurayrah in Medina and lived to witness the rise of the al-Musawwida (1). In extreme old age his eyebrows drooped over his eyes.”
Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah said: “For ten years I kept expecting Hammam to arrive with the pilgrims.”
Al-Maymunī reported: “I heard Ahmad ibn Hanbal speak about Hammam’s ṣaḥīfa. Maʿmar met him during the days of the Blacks, so Hammam read to him; when he tired, Maʿmar would take the scroll and read the remainder to him. ʿAbd al-Razzaq, however, could not tell what had been read to Hammam from what Hammam himself had read. The collection comprises roughly one hundred and forty hadiths.”
I say: Had anyone heard it directly from Hammam—who outlived Abu Hurayrah by some seventy-odd years—he would have lived on into a year slightly beyond 200 AH. Yet we have found no one who transmitted the ṣaḥīfa from Hammam except Maʿmar, and Maʿmar survived him by only a little over twenty years.
Al-Bukhari said: ʿAlī related, “I asked a man who had met Hammam about the year of his death, and he replied: the year 132 AH.”
Abu al-Fidā Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muʿaddal informed us; Abu Muḥammad ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad al-Maqdisī informed us; Abu al-Fath Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī informed us; Abu al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Anbārī informed us; ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Muʿaddal informed us; Ismāʿīl ibn Muḥammad informed us; Aḥmad ibn Manṣūr al-Ramādī narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Razzaq narrated to us; Maʿmar related from Hammam ibn Munabbih, from Abu Hurayrah, who said:
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Leave me so long as I leave you; those before you were only ruined by their excessive questioning and their disagreements …”