ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Bāhilī related—from Ibn Mahdī:
“We untied the lap-wrap of Sufyān al-Thawrī when we set about washing him, and inside it we found small parchments on which were written notes such as: ‘Mubārak ibn Faḍālah is asking for the ḥadīth of such-and-such.’ ”

Abū Dāwūd said: “Mubārak was an inveterate practitioner of tadlīs (concealing one’s source), but whenever he says ‘ḥaddathanā’ (he narrated to us), his report is sound.”

Al-Nasāʾī likewise judged him: “Weak.”

I say: His reports are ḥasan (fair). Ibn Ḥibbān did not mention him in al-Duʿafāʾ, and he was one of the repositories of knowledge.

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd said: “He died in 165 AH. There was some weakness in him, yet ʿAffān elevated his standing and declared him reliable.”

Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad and Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ said that he died in 164 AH.

Al-Bukhārī cited him only for corroboration in the Ṣaḥīḥ.

I have come across several of his higher-level isnāds, as has already been mentioned in the reports of al-Ḥasan, and they also appear in al-Jaʿdiyyāt (1). Among them is the following:

Mubārak informed us, from al-Ḥasan, who said: “ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn told me that a man emancipated six slaves …,” and so forth—the ḥadīth (2).