Al-‘Ibar 1/207; al-Wafi bi-l-wafayat 3/83; Tahdhib al-tahdhib 9/178-181; Khulasat tadhhib al-kamal, no. 337; Tabaqat al-mufassirin 2/144; Shadharat al-dhahab 1/217. (1) Al-Bukhari states in his al-Tarikh al-kabir: “Muhammad b. al-Saʾib Abu al-Nadr al-Kalbi—Yahya b. Saʿid and Ibn Mahdi abandoned him.” ʿAli told us: Yahya b. Saʿid related to us from Sufyan who said, “Al-Kalbi said to me, ‘Abu Salih said to me: Every report I have conveyed to you is a lie.’” Abu Hatim declared: “The scholars unanimously leave his reports; they are worthless.” Al-Nasaʾi said: “He is not reliable; his hadith is not to be written down.” Zaydah recounted: “I used to attend al-Kalbi, until one day I heard him say: ‘I fell ill and forgot all I had memorised. I went to the Family of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him; they spat in my mouth and I recovered everything I had forgotten.’ I swore, ‘By Allah, I shall never transmit anything from you again,’ and I abandoned him.” Muʿtamir b. Sulayman said: “I heard Layth b. Abi Sulaym remark, ‘Kufa has two liars: al-Kalbi and another man.’” Ahmad b. Harun relates: “I asked Ahmad b. Hanbal about al-Kalbi’s tafsir; he replied, ‘It is false.’ I asked, ‘Is it permissible to consult it?’ He answered, ‘No.’” Abu Hatim b. Hibban wrote: “His doctrinal stance and manifest mendacity are too obvious to require lengthy description. Al-Kalbi transmits from Abu Salih from Ibn ʿAbbas, yet Abu Salih never met Ibn ʿAbbas, never heard anything from him, and al-Kalbi only heard from Abu Salih a word here and a word there. What al-Kalbi narrates is not even lawful to mention in books—so how could it constitute proof? Allah, exalted is He, entrusted His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, with explaining His word and clarifying what was revealed to him for humanity, as He said: ‘We sent down the Reminder to you so that you might make clear to people what has been sent down to them’ (Q 16:44). It is utterly impossible that God command the chosen Prophet to clarify His intent in the revealed verses and that the Messenger of the Lord of the worlds, the master of all messengers, then fail to do so. Rather, he did explain the divine intent in the verses and clarified for his community whatever they required—that explanation is his sunnah. Whoever pursues the sunan, memorises them and masters them, has understood the interpretation of God’s word and has no need of al-Kalbi or the likes of him.” See Ibn Hibban, al-Majruhin, 2/253 ff.