He narrated from: Anas ibn Mālik, al-Ḥasan, Ibn Buraydah, ʿIkrimah, Shahr ibn Ḥawshab, Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh, and a number of others.
Among those who transmitted from him were: Shuʿbah, al-Ḥusayn ibn Wāqid, Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭahmān, Ḥammād ibn Salamah, Ḥammād ibn Zayd, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿAmmī, and others.
Other narrators were more accurate than he, yet his reports do not fall below the rank of ḥasan (fair).
Muslim relied upon his narrations as supporting evidence.
Yahya ibn Maʿīn said, “Acceptable.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal remarked, “His transmissions from ʿAṭāʾ are weak.”
Al-Nasāʾī said, “He is not strong.”
Khalīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm related: “I heard my uncle ʿĪsā say, ‘I have never seen anyone like Maṭar al-Warrāq in his grasp of jurisprudence and his asceticism.’”
Mālik ibn Dīnār said, “May Allah have mercy on Maṭar al-Warrāq; I hope that Paradise awaits him.”
Shaybah bint al-Aswad said, “I saw Maṭar al-Warrāq while he was preaching.”
It is said that Maṭar al-Warrāq died in 129 AH.
Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī judged him weak.
Yahya al-Qaṭṭān used to liken Maṭar to Ibn Abī Laylā for poor memory.
Regarding him, ʿUthmān ibn Diḥyah the philologist said, “He is not worth a dastajah(1) of greens.”
Muḥammad ibn Saʿd observed, “There is weakness in his ḥadith.”
Maṭar al-Warrāq said: “When Allah created illness and its cure, He made walking the remedy for biliousness, cupping the remedy for an excess of blood, and the bathhouse the remedy for phlegm.”