Abū Zurʿah crossed out—i.e., dismissed—the ḥadith transmitted by Abū al-Ṣalt.

Abū Ḥātim said, “In my view he was not truthful.”

Al-Nasāʾī and others declared, “He is not reliable.”

Al-Dāraquṭnī reported that it was said of him that he once remarked, “A dog that belongs to the ʿAlawites is better than all of Banū Umayyah.”

Hātim ibn Yūnus al-Jurjānī, the ḥāfiẓ, stated, “I asked Ibn Maʿīn about him and he replied, ‘Trustworthy, but foolish.’ ”

Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad related, “I saw Ibn Maʿīn come to Abū al-Ṣalt and greet him.”

Abū al-Ṣalt himself said, “I kept company with Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah for thirty years, questioning him. I used to visit him while I was still a boy, and I have performed fifty pilgrimages.”

Muḥammad ibn ʿUṣm reported: I heard Abū al-Ṣalt say, “I took from these people—meaning the government—one million three hundred thousand, and I spent seven hundred thousand of it on the inhabitants of the Two Sanctuaries.”

Abū Zayd al-Ḍarīr said: Abū al-Ṣalt narrated to us; ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated from so-and-so, from his father, who said: “When the Mahdī appears, a herald will call out, ‘Whoever has a neighbor who is a Murjiʾite and owes him a debt, let him sell him and pay off his debt.’ ”

I heard some of the elders who were present say that when Abū al-Ṣalt related this, Abū al-Walīd al-Ḥanafī exclaimed, “That is no Mahdī at all, but an aggressor who commands the sale of free men!” They rose from the gathering and left him.

Abū al-Ṣalt died in the year 236 AH, in the month of Shawwāl.

He has several objectionable ḥadiths, yet Ibn Mājah included narrations from him.