dearer to me than ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nāfiʿ al-Ṣāʾigh and than Ibn Wahb (1).
Muḥammad ibn Saʿd said: “Maʿn traded in qazz (silk) in Medina; he would buy it, and he had slave boys who were weavers. He would purchase the cloth and hand it over to them.
“He died in Medina, in Shawwāl of the year 198 AH. He was trustworthy, prolific in ḥadith, firmly reliable, and above suspicion (2).”
Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl al-Bazzār gave the same date for his death and added: “It was on a Tuesday.”
Ahmad ibn Isḥāq informed us; Ahmad ibn Abī al-Fatḥ ibn Ṣirmā and al-Fatḥ ibn ʿAbd Allāh likewise informed us, saying: “Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar the judge informed us; Ahmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Naqqūr informed us; ʿAlī ibn ʿUmar al-Ḥarbī narrated to us; Ahmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī narrated to us; Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn narrated to us; Maʿn narrated to us, from Mālik, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿĀʾishah, who said:
‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ never shook hands with any woman at all.’”
Al-Nasāʾī also recorded this ḥadith in his collection of Mālik’s narrations, through Muʿāwiyah ibn Ṣāliḥ from Ibn Maʿīn (3).
Abū Isḥāq said in al-Ṭabaqāt: “Maʿn would rest his head on Mālik’s doorstep, and Mālik would not utter a single word without Maʿn writing it down. He was Mālik’s stepson, and he is the one who read the Muwattaʾ for al-Rashīd and his sons before Mālik.”
He added: ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said, “Maʿn ibn ʿĪsā produced for us forty thousand legal issues that he had heard from Mālik—may Allah have mercy on him (4).”