Yahya ibn Maʿin said, “Ibrahim ibn Abi ʿAtaʾ is the same man as Ibrahim ibn Abi Yahya.”

I add: Perhaps the wording should be (murābiṭan) “engaged in ribāṭ” rather than (marīḍan) “ill.”

ʿAli ibn Khushram reported: “Whenever ʿIsa ibn Yunus came across the narrations of Ismaʿil ibn ʿAyyash or Ibrahim ibn Abi Yahya, he would say, ‘Strike them out.’”

Ibn Hibban observed, “In his youth al-Shafiʿi used to keep company with Ibn Abi Yahya and memorized from him with a child’s zeal. Later, when he entered Egypt toward the end of his life, he began compiling books and needed narrations, yet had no written copies with him. Much of what he placed in his works therefore came from memory, and he would sometimes refer to Ibrahim obliquely, without naming him.”

He went on: “Ibrahim narrated from Safwan ibn Sulaym, from Saʿid ibn Yasar, from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘A person is upon the religion of his close friend, so let each of you consider well whom he befriends.’ (1)

“This ḥadith was transmitted from him by Bistam ibn Jaʿfar.

“He also narrated from Hisham ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿAʾishah: ‘I sought permission from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ to build a small privy at Mina, but he did not permit me.’ (2)”

Ibn ʿAdi said, “I have found no objectionable report from Ibrahim except through shaykhs whose weakness can be tolerated. He was narrated from by Ibn Jurayj, al-Thawri and other leading scholars, and his Muwaṭṭaʾ is several times the size of Malik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ, with a large number of ḥadiths.”