Abū ʿUmar al-Kindī said: “Harmalah was a jurist; in Egypt there was no one who wrote down more from Ibn Wahb than he did.

That was because Ibn Wahb stayed in their house for a year and some months, hiding from ʿAbbād, who was seeking him in order to appoint him as judge in Egypt. Yaḥyā ibn Abī Muʿāwiyah informed me of this.

Abū Salamah and Abū Dujānah also told me: We heard Harmalah say, ‘Ibn Wahb visited me when I was suffering from an eye infection and said, “Abū Ḥafṣ, one is not normally visited for ophthalmia, but you are of my household.”’

Ahmad ibn Ṣāliḥ said: “Ibn Wahb compiled 120,000 hadith. Some people possess half of them—by that he meant himself—while others possess the entire collection, namely Harmalah.”

Muḥammad ibn Mūsā said: “All of Ibn Wahb’s hadith are with Harmalah, except for two reports.”

Ibn ʿAdī said: “I have thoroughly examined Harmalah’s hadith and investigated them at length; I found nothing in his transmissions that requires declaring him weak. Since Ibn Wahb hid himself in Harmalah’s home and left his entire corpus with him, it is not surprising that Harmalah should transmit narrations unfamiliar to others.⦗1⦘”

Hārūn ibn Saʿīd said: “I heard Ashhab—while looking at Harmalah—say, ‘This man is the best of the people in the mosque.’”

Ibn Yūnus states in his History: “Harmalah was the most proficient of people in dictating what Ibn Wahb had narrated.”

I say: Harmalah never travelled, and he possesses nothing from the scholars of the Ḥijāz.

Ibn Yūnus also said: “He was born in 166 AH, and he died in Shawwāl, nine…"