of Maʿmar differ, the report is to be credited to ʿAbd al-Razzāq.

ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: Hishām ibn Yūsuf told me, “ʿAbd al-Razzāq was the most knowledgeable among us and had the best memory.” (1)

I say: This is how contemporaries used to acknowledge one another’s powers of retention.

Yahyā ibn Maʿīn said: “How profound was ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s knowledge of Maʿmar, and how precise his transmission from him! Hishām ibn Yūsuf, for his part, was eloquent and would compose sermons extemporaneously from the pulpit.”

ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd reported: I asked Ibn Maʿīn, “And how does ʿAbd al-Razzāq fare with the narrations of Sufyān?”

He answered, “He is on the same level as the others—meaning Qabīṣah, al-Firyābī, ʿUbayd Allāh, and Ibn Yamān.” (2)

Aḥmad al-ʿIjlī said: “ʿAbd al-Razzāq is reliable, though he inclined toward Shiʿism.”

In the Musnad, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal relates: “There was no well in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s village, so we would set out early, two miles away, to perform ablution and carry the water back with us.”

Abū ʿAmr al-Mustamlī said: I heard Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ say, “I was with Aḥmad and Isḥāq in the company of ʿAbd al-Razzāq when the day of Eid al-Fiṭr arrived. We went out with him to the prayer-ground, along with many others. When we returned, ʿAbd al-Razzāq invited us to lunch and then said to Aḥmad and Isḥāq, ‘I witnessed something surprising from you today—you did not recite the takbīr!’

Aḥmad and Isḥāq replied, ‘Abu Bakr, we were waiting to see whether you would pronounce the takbīr so that we could follow you. When we saw that you did not, we refrained.’

He said, ‘And I was watching the two of you, to see whether you would pronounce it so that I could do the same.’”