Then Yaʿqūb said: Word reached Abū Khaythama that Jarīr sometimes transmitted a report without naming his source and that he would not say, “So-and-so narrated to us.” He was asked, “Do you think he was engaging in tadlīs (concealing the immediate transmitter)?” Abū Khaythama replied, “He was not guilty of tadlīs, for whenever we came to him and he happened to be in the narrations of al-Aʿmash, or Mansūr, or Mughīrah, he would start afresh, take up the book and say, ‘So-and-so narrated to us,’ and then relate one ḥadīth from that shaykh. After that he would simply say, ‘Mansūr, Mansūr,’ or ‘al-Aʿmash, al-Aʿmash.’ He did not repeat ‘So-and-so narrated to us’ for every single report (1) until the session came to an end.

Yaʿqūb continued: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad narrated to us, saying, “I heard Sulaymān al-Shādhakūnī say:

‘I arrived in the presence of Jarīr, and he was impressed by the breadth of my memorization and treated me with honor. Later, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn arrived with the Baghdādīs who were accompanying him while I was still there. They noticed the standing I had with Jarīr, and some of them said to him, "This man has only been sent by Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān to ruin your ḥadīth for you and to keep track of everything you narrate." Jarīr had already narrated to us from Mughīrah, from Ibrāhīm.

One day, while I was with his nephew, I happened to see written on the back of one of the nephew’s books: “from Ibn al-Mubārak, from Sufyān, from Mughīrah, from Ibrāhīm.” I said to the nephew, “Your uncle sometimes relates this report directly from Mughīrah, sometimes from Sufyān from Mughīrah, and yet other times from Ibn al-Mubārak from Sufyān from Mughīrah. You should ask him from whom he actually heard it”—for that report was fabricated.

So I confronted Jarīr about it and asked, “From whom did you hear the ḥadīth concerning the divorce of the mute man?” He answered, “A man from Khurāsān narrated it to me from Ibn al-Mubārak.” I said, “Yet you have narrated it once from Mughīrah, another time from Sufyān from Mughīrah, and yet another time from a man from Ibn al-Mubārak from Sufyān from Mughīrah. I do not see you settling on one chain. Who is that man?” He replied, “A man from the scholars of ḥadīth.’”}