Moreover, Qāḍī Shams al-Dīn relates in the biography of Ṭāwūs (1) that al-Manṣūr summoned Ibn Ṭāwūs together with Mālik ibn Anas. He adds that Ibn Ṭāwūs answered the caliph with frank, cutting words. This, however, is untenable, for Ibn Ṭāwūs died in 132 AH—before al-Manṣūr ever came to power. In that same year the last of the Umayyad caliphs, Marwān al-Ḥimār, was killed and al-Saffāḥ assumed the caliphate; Allah knows best.

27 – ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd, Abū ʿUthmān al-Baṣrī *
An ascetic, a devoted worshipper, a Qadarī—indeed the leading Muʿtazilite and their pioneer, Abū ʿUthmān al-Baṣrī.

He transmitted from: Abū al-ʿĀliya, Abū Qilābah, and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.

Narrated from him: the two Ḥammāds, ʿAbd al-Wārith, Ibn ʿUyaynah, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Thaqafī, ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim, and Quraysh ibn Anas—after which al-Qaṭṭān abandoned him.

Al-Nasāʾī said: “He is not reliable.”

Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth remarked: “I never met anyone more ascetic than he, yet he adopted the views he adopted.”

Ibn al-Mubārak said: “He preached the Qadar doctrine, so the scholars left him.”

Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh reported: “I heard ʿAmr say: ‘If the verse, “Perish the hands of Abū Lahab” (Q 111:1), is written in the Preserved Tablet, then Allah has no case against the children of Adam.’”

He continued: “I heard him mention the ḥadīth of ‘the truthful, the one who is believed,’ and he said, ‘If I heard al-Aʿmash relate it I would declare him a liar…,’ until he went on to say: ‘And even if…’”