Bakr ibn Aḥmad, the ḥāfiẓ, told us: Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar related to us, saying, “I heard Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm declare:
‘I sought out ḥadith, yet I have never seen the hadith-scholars in the condition they are in today. Were it not that I say to myself, “It is a sunnah I am reviving and a bidʿah (innovation) I am extinguishing—perhaps Allah will thereby expiate some of what I have done—I would not transmit at all.’”
76 – al-Babluttī, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk al-Umawī *
The shaykh, the scholar, the muḥaddith: Abū Saʿīd Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Bābluta al-Umawī, their client, known as al-Babluttī (1), al-Ḥarrānī.
He narrated from: his step-father Abū ʿAmr al-Awzāʿī; Abū Bakr ibn Abī Maryam; Ṣafwān ibn ʿAmr al-Saksakī; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Thābit ibn Thawbān; Ibn Abī Dhīb; Abū Jaʿfar al-Rāzī; and others.
Among those who transmitted from him are: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Ḥarrānī; Abū Isḥāq al-Jawzajānī; Ismāʿīl Sammūyah; Sulaymān ibn Sayf; Abū Umayyah al-Ṭarsūsī; Isḥāq ibn Sayyār al-Naṣībī; Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar Sinjah; and a number of others. The last of his students to pass away was his stepson Abū Shuʿayb ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḥarrānī.
Al-Bukhārī said: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal remarked, “As for his direct audition, that cannot be denied.” (2)
But Abū Zurʿah (3) and others considered him weak.