of tadlīs (concealed transmission), making it appear as though he had actually heard them (1). A number of transmitters have slipped into this practice, and it is lighter than inventing the very wording of a report.

Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī said, “I have not seen among the ḥadith scholars anyone who can preserve a narration and reproduce it verbatim without changing a single word except Qabīṣah and Abū Nuʿaym with the transmissions of Sufyān al-Thawrī, Yaḥyā al-Himmanī with the transmissions of Sharīk, and ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd with his own narrations (2).”

Abū Aḥmad ibn ʿAdī said, “Yaḥyā al-Himmanī possesses a sound Musnad, and it is said that he was the first person in Kūfah to compile a Musnad.

“The first to compile a Musnad in Baṣrah was Musaddad, and the first to do so in Egypt was Asad al-Sunnah, who died earlier than the other two.

“It is also said that al-Dārimī deposited some of his books with al-Himmanī, from which the latter pilfered certain ḥadiths; hence Aḥmad and Ibn al-Madīnī spoke against him. He added, ‘Yet Yaḥyā (ibn Maʿīn) praises him highly…,’ until Ibn ʿAdī concluded:

‘I have not found in his Musnad or in his narrations any objectionable ḥadiths, and I hope there is no harm in him (3).’”

Our teacher Abū al-Ḥajjāj said, “His grandfather was Maymūn—some say ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Maymūn—nicknamed Bashmīn (4).”

I say: The endorsements of his reliability transmitted from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn have reached the level of recurrent testimony, just as the criticisms reported from Imām Aḥmad have reached that same level, along with the authentic report that he declared a Companion to be an unbeliever.

He has no narrations in the Six Books; their authors deliberately avoided citing his ḥadith. Nevertheless, his name is mentioned in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim in the course of clarifying the correct pronunciation of a name, where Muslim says after the ḥadith of Sulaymān ibn Bilāl, from