Al-ʿAbbas ibn Musʿab said, “I was informed that Ibn al-Mubarak was asked about al-Nadr ibn Shumayl, and he answered:
‘He is one of the uniquely gifted scholars; none of Khalil ibn Ahmad’s pupils can compare with him.’
Al-ʿAbbas continued, “Al-Nadr was an imam in Arabic philology and hadith. He was the first person to make the Sunnah openly observed in Marw and the whole of Khurasan. He was the most copious transmitter from Shuʿbah, he produced many books in fields where no one had preceded him, and he served as the judge of Marw. (1)
Ahmad ibn Saʿid al-Darimi said: I heard al-Nadr ibn Shumayl say, ‘In Khalil’s book there are such-and-such issues of disbelief.’
Al-ʿAbbas ibn Musʿab also reported: Al-Nadr was asked about the work attributed to al-Khalil, known as Kitab al-ʿAyn, and he denied that it was his.
Someone said to him, ‘Perhaps he composed it after your time?’
He replied, ‘Did I even leave Basra before I had buried Khalil ibn Ahmad? (2)’
Ahmad al-Darimi further said: I heard al-Nadr ibn Shumayl state, ‘My father took me out of Marw…’
Near it stands a locality called Qasr al-Ahnaf, named after al-Ahnaf ibn Qays, the victorious commander who conquered the area and annexed it to the Muslim realm during the caliphate of Uthman (32 A.H.). Marw enjoyed great renown in Islamic history for the eminent scholars it produced from the first to the end of the sixth Hijri century.
(1) Tahdhib al-Kamal, entry 1411; see also Bughyat al-Wuʿat, 2/317.
(2) This claim deserves scrutiny. The author himself says, “I lived in the Bedouin desert for forty years,” which means he was away from al-Khalil long enough to write several works, not merely one. Among the writings attributed to al-Nadr ibn Shumayl is al-Madkhal ila al-Ayn. Linguistic specialists hold that al-Khalil ibn Ahmad conceived the plan of Kitab al-Ayn, gathered its materials, began the drafting and organised its opening sections, but left it unfinished; completion fell to al-Layth ibn Nasr, his other pupils and contemporaries. Abu al-Tayyib al-Lughawi reports in Maratib al-Nahwiyyin, on the authority of Thalab, that the errors in Kitab al-Ayn arose because al-Khalil only sketched the work without “filling it in.” Had he done so, nothing would have been lacking, for no one equalled al-Khalil. Later scholars supplied the content, but their version did not reach us through an authorised transmission chain; it came via copyists, and this explains the book’s defects. For a full discussion, see al-Muʿjam al-Arabi: Nashatuhu wa Tatawwuruhu, 1/254, 271.