—his nephew, or from the notebooks of Ibn Wahb, apart from the material he reported from al-Aʿraj.

Jaʿfar al-Firyābī said: I heard one of our companions mention that he had heard Qutaybah say, “Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal told me, ‘The reports you transmit from Ibn Luhayʿah are sound.’ I replied, ‘That is because we would copy them from Ibn Wahb’s book and then hear them directly from Ibn Luhayʿah himself.’”

Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Ḥarrānī said: Ibn Luhayʿah told me, “I have not omitted a single letter of Yazīd (1) ibn Abī Ḥabīb’s narrations.”

ʿUthmān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Sahmī reported, on the authority of Ibrāhīm ibn Isḥāq, the judge of Egypt: “I carried al-Layth’s letter to Mālik and brought back his reply. Mālik kept asking me about Ibn Luhayʿah, and I informed him of his condition. He then said, ‘Does he not mention the pilgrimage?’ At that moment it occurred to me that he wished to hear ḥadith from him.”

Al-Thawrī said, “I performed the pilgrimage several times just so I could meet Ibn Luhayʿah.”

Muḥammad ibn Muʿāwiyah stated: I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī say, “I wish I had heard 500 ḥadith from Ibn Luhayʿah, even if it had cost me a muwaddā—apparently meaning the full blood-money.”

Abū Ṭāhir ibn al-Sarḥ said: I heard Ibn Wahb say, “By Allah, the truthful, upright ʿAbd Allāh ibn Luhayʿah narrated to me.” Abū Ṭāhir added, “I never once heard him swear an oath like that.” (2)

Hanbal narrated from Abū ʿAbd Allāh [Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal] that he said, “Ibn Luhayʿah reads his own books more accurately than Ibn Wahb does.”