Ṣāliḥ, and he replied, “I regard him as a liar who parades about in the main mosque of Egypt.” (1)
ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn al-Nasāʾī reported from his father:
“Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ is neither reliable nor trustworthy. Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā abandoned him, and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn accused him of lying.” (2)
Ibn ʿAdī said, “Al-Nasāʾī thought poorly of him and rejected some of his narrations—among them the report transmitted by Ibn Wahb, from Mālik, from Suhayl, from his father, from Abū Hurayrah, traced back to the Prophet ﷺ: ‘Religion is sincere counsel.’
“Even so,” Ibn ʿAdī continued, “Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ was one of the careful preservers of hadith, especially the traditions of the Hijaz, and was renowned for his expertise in them. Al-Bukhārī—despite his rigorous selectivity—narrated from him, as did Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, and both relied on his familiarity with many Hijazi reports.
“Numerous trustworthy scholars related hadith from him, confident in his precision and mastery, and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn’s criticism was excessively severe.
“As for al-Nasāʾī’s harsh censure, I heard Muḥammad ibn Hārūn ibn Ḥassān al-Barqī say, ‘This Khurāsānī is attacking Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ; yet I was present in Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ’s gathering when he expelled him from the session, and that drove him to…’”
(1) Ibn Hibban maintains that the man whom Yahya ibn Maʿin declared a liar was Ahmad ibn Salih al-Shamumi, not Ahmad ibn Salih al-Misri. In al-Thiqat he writes: “In the sciences of hadith, his memorization, his grasp of chronology, and his knowledge of the genealogies of the scholars, Ahmad ibn Salih held for the people of Egypt a place comparable to that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal for our colleagues in Iraq. Yet he was proud and overbearing, scarcely acknowledging the rank of those who frequented him, and this provoked envy. The statement transmitted by Muʿawiyah ibn Salih from Yahya ibn Maʿin—‘Ahmad ibn Salih is a liar’—concerns Ahmad ibn Salih al-Shamumi, an elder in Mecca who fabricated hadith; Muʿawiyah had asked Yahya about him. As for the Egyptian Ahmad ibn Salih, he rivaled Ibn Maʿin in memorization and precision, and his knowledge of the hadith of Egypt and the Hijaz surpassed that of Yahya ibn Maʿin.”
(2) The author says in Siyar 11/82–83, in the biography of Yahya ibn Maʿin: “Among the few instances in which Ibn Maʿin went astray is his criticism of Ahmad ibn Salih, the hadith master of Egypt. He spoke about him on the basis of his own ijtihad, judging him deficient in probity, not in accuracy, for Ahmad was both precise and reliable. What marred him was a measure of pride and self-importance—yet Allah does not love every self-conceited boaster. Perhaps Ibn Maʿin observed some behavior from Ahmad in his youth, from which he later repented fully or in part; then he grew older, devoted himself to righteousness, met al-Bukhari and other leading scholars, and they relied on his narrations.”