ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī said: “I heard ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī declare, ‘That is disbelief’—that is, whoever says, ‘The Qur’an is created.’
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (1) ibn Abī Ḥātim said: “Abū Zurʿah stopped transmitting from ʿAlī because of what had appeared from him during the ordeal, whereas my father continued to narrate from him, since he had recanted what he had formerly held.”
My father said: “ʿAlī was a standard-bearer among the people in the knowledge of hadith and its hidden defects.”
I say: It is reported from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad that his father ceased narrating from Ibn al-Madīnī, yet I have not found that to be so; in his Musnad there are ḥadiths from him, and in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī a considerable number as well.
Imām Abū Zakariyyā, the author of (al-Rawḍah), said: “Ibn al-Madīnī composed nearly two hundred works on hadith.”
Ḥanbal ibn Isḥāq said: “Al-Mutawakkil summoned ʿAlī to this place; he then returned to Baṣrah and died.”
I say: Rather, he died in Sāmarrāʾ.
This was stated by al-Baghawī and others.
Al-Ḥārith ibn Muḥammad said: “He died in Sāmarrāʾ, in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the year 234 AH.”
Al-Bukhārī said: “He died with two days remaining of Dhū al-Qaʿdah, in the year 234 AH.”
Al-Fasawī was mistaken, for he said: “He died in the year 235 AH—may Allah forgive him.”
In that same year 234 AH there also died: Abū Jaʿfar al-Nufaylī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, Abū Khaythamah, Ibn Numayr, al-Shādhakūnī, ʿUthmān ibn Ṭālūt, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Barrād al-Ashʿarī.