and Hushaym, Ibn al-Mubarak, Yazid ibn Zurayʿ, ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿAmr al-Raqqi, and their contemporaries.

Those who transmitted from him were: Ishaq ibn Rahwayh, Ishaq al-Kawsaj, ʿAbd ibn Humayd, Abu Muhammad al-Darimi, Hajjaj ibn al-Shaʿir, Ahmad ibn ʿAli al-Barbahari (1), Muʿawiyah ibn Salih al-Dimashqi, and Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Bukhari—outside the Sahih directly, and within the Sahih through an intermediary—together with many others.

Ahmad al-ʿIjli said, “A Kufan, reliable, a righteous and austere man.” (2)

Al-Mundhir ibn Shadhan declared, “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Zakariyya ibn ʿAdī. Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Yahya once came to him and said, ‘Bring out to us the book of ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿAmr.’ He replied, ‘What will you do with it? Take your tablets and I will dictate the whole of it to you.’”

He used to narrate from several of al-Aʿmash’s pupils, carefully distinguishing each one’s wording. (3)

ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khirash said, “He is reliable and God-fearing.” (4)

It is also said that when death approached him he exclaimed, “O Allah, I yearn to meet You.”

Abu ʿAwf al-Buzuri stated, “I have never written from anyone better than Zakariyya ibn ʿAdī.”

Abu Yahya Ṣaʿiqah related: “Zakariyya ibn ʿAdī arrived, and they persuaded someone to appoint him over a village for thirty dirhams a month. After a month he came back and said, ‘I do not find myself…’”