Hammād ibn Zayd said, “Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim related to us: Qays ibn Saʿd narrated to us on the authority of Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭāʾah. We remained as long as Allah willed; then Ḥajjāj himself arrived when he was about thirty—or thirty-one—years old. I saw people crowding around him in numbers I had never seen around Ḥammād ibn Abī Sulaymān. With him were Maṭar al-Warrāq, Dāwūd ibn Abī Hind, and Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd, all kneeling on their shins and saying, ‘Abū Arṭāʾah, what do you say about such-and-such? Abū Arṭāʾah, what is your ruling on such-and-such?’
Hushaym ibn Bashīr said, “I heard Ḥajjāj declare, ‘I was asked for fatwas when I was sixteen.’”
Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth said, “I heard Ḥajjāj state, ‘I have never argued with anyone, nor have I ever sat with a group engaged in argument.’”
ʿAbbās reported from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn: “He heard from Makhūl, and in some of his narrations he explicitly says, ‘I heard Makhūl.’”
Al-Nassāʾī said, “He is not strong.”
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khirrāsh said, “He was a memoriser of hadith, yet he practised tadlīs.”
Ibn ʿAdī said, “People criticised him only for his tadlīs from al-Zuhrī and others. He might err in some transmissions, but as for deliberately lying—no. His hadith are worthy of being written down.”
Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah said, “His hadith are weak and contain much inconsistency; still, he is truthful and was counted among the jurists.”
Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said, “Ḥajjāj was one of the scholars and preservers of hadith.”
Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ said, “He died in Rayy.”
The author adds: He also transmitted a single hadith from al-Shaʿbī.