ʿĪsā ibn Aḥmad al-Balkhī said, “Al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Walīd—whose nickname was Kumayl—narrated to me.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal remarked, “He was trustworthy …,” and went on to speak well of him. (1)
It was also said that he used to treat the people of hadith to falūdhaj (a sweet pudding), give them stipends, and that he was dignified, well-off, generous, a jurist, and a man of great standing.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Farrāʾ stated, “He died in 202 AH.” (2)
Al-Bukhārī said, “He died in 203 AH.” (3)
The author says: Al-Nasāʾī narrated from him, and al-Bukhārī cited him in a suspended form. (4)
203 – The lord of al-Andalus, the Emir Abū al-ʿĀṣ al-Ḥakam ibn Hishām al-Umawī, son of “the Immigrant” ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muʿāwiyah, son of the caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam al-Umawī al-Marwānī.
Allah said: “When I grant a servant sound health and ample provision, yet five years pass without him coming to visit Me (that is, performing the pilgrimage), he is truly deprived.”
(1) Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 8, p. 144.
(2) Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 8, p. 145.
(3) Al-Bukhari, al-Tarikh al-Saghir, vol. 2, p. 300.
(4) A muallaq (suspended) hadith is one in which the narrator omits one or more transmitters from the beginning of the chain and attributes the report to someone above the gap, or even drops the entire chain and simply says, “The Prophet ﷺ said…”. Whatever al-Bukhari cites with a decisive wording is generally deemed authentic, for he would not speak definitively unless the report had reached him soundly; what he records with a tentative wording such as “it is related” is usually weak.
(*) The author includes this man’s biography in volume 8, p. 225 of the present work. Although he does not belong to that generation, the author mentioned him alongside the governors of al-Andalus. We noted this in the Introduction; for further sources, see the references cited there.