and he was a man of broad learning: he knew jurisprudence, hadith, and grammar, and he could discuss—in other words, he understood and could review—the narrations of Sufyan al-Thawri, Shuʿbah, and the scholars of Iraq, engaging in scholarly debate about them.
He added: “He travelled to Iraq, wrote from ʿAffan and the rest of that circle, and would review the hadith of al-Zuhri and had them committed to memory.” (1)
Ahmad ibn Salih said: “I copied one hundred thousand hadith from Ibn Zubalah—that is, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Zubalah (2)—but later it became clear to me that he fabricated reports, so I abandoned his narrations.” (3)
Ahmad ibn Salih used to commend Abu al-Tahir ibn al-Sarh, while criticizing Harmalah and Yunus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿla.
Ibn ʿAdi said: “I heard Muhammad ibn Musa al-Hadrami—the brother of Abu ʿAjibah—say: I heard some of our teachers relate that Ahmad ibn Salih remarked, ‘Ibn Wahb compiled one hundred and twenty thousand hadith. Some people possess them all’—meaning Harmalah—‘whereas others have half of them,’ referring to himself.”
ʿAli ibn al-Junayd, the ḥāfiẓ, said: “I heard Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Numayr say: ‘Ahmad ibn Salih transmitted to us, and once you have crossed the Euphrates, there is no one his equal.’” (4)