‘Muhammad ibn Khalid narrated to us,’ yet he did not declare him explicitly. (1)

Al-Khatib said: “He was one of the knowledgeable imams and a meticulous ḥadith master.

He compiled the reports of al-Zuhri, producing an excellent work, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal used to speak well of him and make his merits widely known. (2)

Al-Hakim related: “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Yaʿqūb say: ‘I saw the funeral of Muhammad ibn Yahya; people were running before the bier and behind it, and I was eight years old.’

Muhammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Hāniʾ said: I heard Muhammad ibn al-Naḍr al-Jārūdī say: ‘I was told that Muhammad ibn Yahya used to write notes in the session of Yahya ibn Yahya. ʿAlī ibn Salamah al-Labaqī noticed the beauty of his handwriting and the care with which he recorded and said, “My son, shall I not advise you? Abū Zakariyyā is transmitting to you from Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah while he is still alive, from Wakīʿ while he is alive in Kūfah, from Yahya ibn Saʿīd and a group who are alive in Baṣrah, and from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī who is alive in Isfahān. So set out in search of knowledge and do not waste your days.”’

He followed that advice: he travelled to Isfahān and heard ḥadith from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī and al-Ḥusayn ibn Ḥafṣ. Then he entered Baṣrah, but Yahya had already died; there he wrote from Abū Dāwūd and his peers and stayed on for quite some time until Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah passed away.

I say: Meeting him would have been impossible, for Sufyān died in the middle of the year, and a journey to Mecca could only have been undertaken with the official caravan. As for Wakīʿ, he died before al-Dhuhlī had even set out from his homeland.

He went on: ‘So he travelled to Yemen and took a large number of narrations from ʿAbd al-Razzāq…’