“This discipline must be recorded only from a man who, the very day he set the ḥadīth down in writing, knew exactly what he was writing—truthful, trustworthy with respect to it; then, when he relates it later, he still knows precisely what he is relating.

Al-Bayhaqī said: al-Ḥākim informed us; Abū Zakariyyā al-ʿAnazī informed us; Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Sawwār narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Sulaymān ibn Abī Maṭar al-Balkhī narrated to us: I asked Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal about Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, Ibn Mahdī, Wakīʿ, and Abū Nuʿaym, and he replied, “I have never seen anyone more diligent than Wakīʿ(1); as for ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, his knowledge and precision are sufficient for you; I have not seen a man more even-handed with people—showing no favoritism—and more exacting in matters concerning narrators than Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd. As for Abū Nuʿaym, he is the least prone to error of the four, and in my judgment he is reliable, a point of authoritative proof in ḥadīth(2).”

Aḥmad ibn Mulāʿib said: I heard Abū Nuʿaym say, “Ḥadīth should be taken only from one who has mastered it, is trustworthy in it, and is knowledgeable about the narrators.”

I say: Abū Nuʿaym also had a playful side. ʿAlī ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Maqāniʿī(3) reported: I heard al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAmr al-ʿAnqazī say: A man knocked on Abū Nuʿaym’s door. Abū Nuʿaym asked, “Who is it?”

The man replied, “It is I.”

He said, “Who is ‘I’?”

The man answered, “A man from the children of Adam.”

So Abū Nuʿaym came out to him, kissed him, and said, “Welcome, welcome! I never imagined that anyone from that line was still alive.”(4)

I add: The number of his teachers listed in al-Tahdhīb is two hundred and three persons.