Ahmad ibn Sulayman al-Ruhawi said: “Yazid narrated to us and reported that Hariz used to say, ‘We have our Imam and you have yours’—meaning Muʿawiyah and ʿAli (may Allah be pleased with them both).

ʿImran ibn Aban related: “I heard Hariz say, ‘I do not love him; he killed my forefathers.’”

Shababa said: “I heard a man say to Hariz ibn ʿUthman, ‘It has reached me that you do not ask Allah to show mercy to ʿAli!’ He replied, ‘Be quiet—may Allah have mercy on him a hundred times.’”

ʿAli ibn ʿAyyash reported: “I heard Hariz ibn ʿUthman say, ‘By Allah, I have never reviled ʿAli at all.’”

I (the author) say: This shaykh was too scrupulous for that. Muʿadh ibn Muʿadh remarked: “I do not know that I have ever seen a Syrian better than Hariz.”

Yahya ibn Maʿin and a number of others declared: “He is trustworthy.”

ʿAli ibn ʿAyyash also said: “We gathered Hariz’s hadith in a single notebook—about two hundred reports—brought it to him, and he was astonished, saying, ‘Is all of this really from me?’”

Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud said: “I heard Muʿawiyah ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Rahabi say, ‘I heard Hariz ibn ʿUthman counsel: “Do not make anyone your enemy until you know what lies between him and Allah. If he is righteous, Allah will not abandon him to your enmity; and if he is wicked, his own deeds will soon spare you the trouble of opposing him.”’”

Hariz ibn ʿUthman died in 163 AH at a little over ninety years of age.

One of his narrations appears in al-Bukhari’s collection among the thulathiyyat (chains containing only three transmitters). ʿIsam ibn Khalid relates it from him.

Yazid ibn ʿAbd Rabbih said that he was born in 80 AH.

36 – al-Husayn ibn Muṭayr, client of the Banu Asad.
A gifted poet of striking eloquence, he witnessed both dynasties—the Umayyad