And from him narrated al-Bukhārī; Abū Dāwūd—he was the senior-most of Abū Dāwūd’s teachers—Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, Zayd ibn Akhzam, Ḥajjāj ibn al-Shāʿir, ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dārimī, Abū Zurʿah, Abū Ḥātim, Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah, Aḥmad ibn al-Furāt, Yaḥyā ibn Maṭarrif, Ismāʿīl Sammuya, Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar al-Raqqī Sinjah, Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn ad-Durays, Abū Muslim al-Kajji, Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Suwayd, Abū Khalīfah, ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sanjar al-Jurjānī, and a great many others besides.
Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr transmitted from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn that he said about him: “Trustworthy, reliable.” (1)
Al-Faḍl ibn Sahl al-Aʿraj related: “Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn used to rank Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm above Muʿādh ibn Hishām, saying, ‘I will not put a man who narrated only from his father on the same level as a man who narrated from many people.’” (2)
Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī said: I heard Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm state, “I have written down hadith from eight hundred teachers, yet I have never crossed the bridge.” (3)
Abū Dāwūd said: “Muslim never travelled to seek hadith from anyone, yet he wrote from almost one thousand shaykhs. These names belong to the co-students of Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm, ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, and Isḥāq ibn Idrīs.” (4)
He also said: “Muslim had perfectly memorised his material from Qurrah, and he likewise had the narrations of Hishām committed to memory,”