to him until he had performed the ʿatamah (the late-evening prayer); once he had prayed the ʿatamah he would sit down and I would read to him, and he would say, “O Ṣāliḥ, this is no single sheet—this is an entire quire.”
al-Ismāʿīlī related: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Sayyār told us:
“ Hishām ibn ʿAmmār had to be prompted; every report he transmitted was dictated to him. Yet he would declare, ‘I have released these aḥādīth in sound form, and Allah—exalted is He—has said, “Whoever alters it after hearing it, the sin rests only upon those who alter it” (al-Baqarah 2:181).’
He used to take one dirham for every two pages, laying down his own terms and saying, ‘If the handwriting is minute, fine script is none of my concern.’
He also said—and this was after I had told him, ‘If you truly have it committed to memory, then narrate; but if you do not, do not parrot what others prompt you’—that remark unsettled him, and he replied, ‘I know these aḥādīth.’
About an hour later he said to me, ‘If you would like to find out, slip an isnād (chain of transmission) into something.’ So I examined the chains that contained a bit of confusion and began asking him about them; he went through them and recognised them.
Abū Bakr al-Marwazī said: Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal mentioned Hishām ibn ʿAmmār and commented, ‘He is flighty, light-minded.’
Khaythamah reported: I heard Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf say, ‘We visited Hishām ibn ʿAmmār at one of his farms. He was sitting on his threshing floor and his private parts had become exposed, so we said, “Shaykh, cover yourself!” He replied, “Did you see it? Then may your eyes never suffer inflammation!”—he was joking.’
The ḥāfiẓ Muḥammad ibn Abī Naṣr al-Ḥumaydī said: Some hadith scholars in Baghdad informed me that Hishām ibn ʿAmmār said, ‘I asked Allah—exalted is He—for seven needs; He granted me six of them, and regarding the seventh I do not know what He has decreed. I asked Him to forgive me and my parents—about that I do not know. I asked Him to grant me the pilgrimage, and He did. I asked Him to let me live a hundred years, and He did.’
I say: he lived only ninety-two years.
He continued, ‘And I asked Him to …’