It is also related that Hishām reached for Abū Jaʿfar’s hand to kiss it, but the caliph pulled his hand back and said, “Son of ʿUrwah! We honour you too much to let you do that, and we honour this hand too much to extend it to anyone else.”
I say: Abū Jaʿfar treated him with such respect because of his noble standing, his learning, and because he was a descendant of Ṣafiyyah, the sister of al-ʿAbbās.
Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah said, “Hishām is sound and reliable; no objection was raised against him until after he moved to Iraq, for there he became free-handed in narration and would transmit from his father reports he had actually heard from others, attributing them to his father.”
I add: In the Iraqi transmissions from Hishām there are slips that can be tolerated, just as slips occur in their transmissions from Maʿmar.
A number of scholars have recorded precisely that Hishām died in Baghdad in 146 AH and that Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr led the funeral prayer over him. Al-Fallās, however, diverged and said it was 147; others said 145; it has also been said that he lived eighty-seven years, and still other opinions exist.
Many of his elevated isnāds have reached me, even in the Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, through the narration of ʿUbaydullāh ibn Mūsā from him. Higher still is what ʿUmar ibn Ṭabarzad related to us in person: Hibatullāh ibn al-Ḥuṣayn told us, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ghaylān told us, Abū Bakr al-Shāfiʿī told us, Muḥammad ibn Ghālib Tamtām told us, Yaḥyā ibn Hāshim told us, Hishām narrated from his father, from ʿĀʾishah, who said:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ loved sweetmeats and honey.”
Yet Yaḥyā al-Simsār is not reliable (1); as for the wording, it is found in the authentic collections.