He also used to say, “With my own hand I have written one million hadiths.”

I remark: he is speaking of the repetitions; do you not see him saying, “Had we not written a single hadith fifty times, we would never have mastered it?”

I was informed by Abū al-Makārim al-Labbān and others, from ʿAbd al-Ghaffār ibn Muḥammad, who said: Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Karmānī related to us, “I heard Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Gunjar say, ‘I heard ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mūsā al-Salāmī say, “I heard al-Faḍl ibn Shākir in the region of Daylam say, ‘I heard Yazīd ibn Mujālid say, “I heard Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn declare:

When you write, collect everything you can; and when you transmit, scrutinise carefully.”’”’”

I also heard him say, “The person who picks and chooses (1) among hadiths will one day regret it, when regret will be of no benefit.”

Al-Aṣamm narrated: ʿAbbās told us, “I heard Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn say:
‘We were in a village in Egypt and had nothing with us, nor was there anything we could buy. At daybreak we suddenly found a basket filled with grilled fish that belonged to no one. The people asked me about it, so I said, “Divide it up and eat, for I believe it is provision Allah—exalted is He—has granted you.”’”

I heard Yaḥyā on many occasions affirm, “The Quran is the speech of Allah and is not created; faith is word and deed, and it increases and decreases.”

ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ziyād al-Qaṭawānī transmitted from Abū ʿUbayd, who said: “The science of hadith culminated with four men: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—he has the deepest juristic understanding of it; Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn—he has written the most of it; ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī—he is the most knowledgeable about it; and Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah—he has the strongest memory for it.”

In another wording from Abū ʿUbayd: “and with Ibn Maʿīn—he is the most knowledgeable among them of what is sound and what is weak.”

ʿUbayd Allāh al-Qawārīrī said: Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān told me, “No one of the like of Aḥmad and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn has ever come to us in Basra.”