Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī said, “Someone who heard ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī informed me that he used to say, ‘Al-Wāqidī has narrated thirty thousand singular hadiths.’

ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī transmitted from his father who said, ‘Al-Wāqidī possesses twenty thousand hadiths of which I have never heard.’ He then added, ‘Nothing should be transmitted from him …,’ and he declared him weak. (1)

Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said, ‘Al-Wāqidī has produced twenty thousand singular reports attributed to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.’

Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā related, ‘Al-Shāfiʿī told me, “The books of al-Wāqidī are false.”’ (2)

Al-Mughīra ibn Muḥammad al-Muhallabī said, ‘I heard Ibn al-Madīnī say, “In my estimation, Haytham ibn ʿAdī is more reliable than al-Wāqidī.”’

I say: the scholars are unanimously agreed that Haytham is weak.

Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr reported from Ibn Maʿīn that he said, ‘Al-Wāqidī is worthless.’ (3) On another occasion he remarked, ‘His hadith is not to be written down.’

Al-Dūlābī narrates: Muʿāwiya ibn Ṣāliḥ told us that Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said to him, ‘Al-Wāqidī is a liar.’

Al-Nasāʾī, in his work al-Kunā, reported that ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad al-Khaffāf informed us, saying, ‘Ishāq declared, “In my view he is among those who fabricate hadith”—meaning al-Wāqidī.’