—God willing— I put the question to Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, and he replied, “Perhaps Mālik only intended that with respect to ordinary speech; as for ḥadīth, he is trustworthy, and I myself narrate from him.”

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Munḏir said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nāfiʿ narrated to me:

“Ibn Abī Ḏiʾb, Ibn al-Mājshūn, Ibn Abī Ḥāzim, and Ibn Isḥāq all spoke against Mālik, and the harshest of them was Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq. He used to say, ‘Bring me some of his books so I may expose their flaws; I am the veterinarian of his books.’”

Al-Khaṭīb remarked, “Mālik’s criticism of Ibn Isḥāq is well known; but the story transmitted by Ibn Fulayḥ from him about Hishām ibn ʿUrwah is not reliably preserved, and the man who relates it from Ibn al-Munḏir is unidentified.”

I say: therefore it is rejected.

More than one scholar has refrained from citing Ibn Isḥāq’s reports as authoritative, for reasons such as his inclination toward Shīʿism, the claim that he subscribed to the Qadarī view, and his practice of tadlīs. His basic truthfulness, however, is not denied.

Al-Bukhārī said, “I saw ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh (Ibn al-Madīnī) adducing Ibn Isḥāq’s ḥadīth as evidence,” and he related from Sufyān that “he had never seen anyone accuse him.”

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Munḏir also said: ʿUmar ibn ʿUthmān narrated to us:

“Al-Zuhrī had picked up the accounts of the military expeditions from Ibn Isḥāq in what he reported from ʿĀṣim ibn ʿUmar. Whatever is alleged about Mālik’s view of Ibn Isḥāq is hardly clear. Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways—one of the most devoted followers of Mālik we ever met—brought out for me Ibn Isḥāq’s books, transmitted from his father, on the expeditions and other matters, and I extracted a great deal from them.”

He further told me, “Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd possessed about seventeen thousand ḥadīth from Ibn Isḥāq on legal rulings, not counting the expeditions.”