Ibn Abī Ḥātim said, “I heard from Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad, and he is truthful. (1)

Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī stated: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad and others narrated to me that Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī and his son Yaḥyā once differed over a certain issue. One of them said to the other, ‘Let us appoint an arbitrator between us.’ They agreed on Ibn Khuzaymah, who ruled in favor of Yaḥyā against his father.

Al-Muzakkī added: Yaḥyā held an esteemed position in scholarship and hadith; he had heard from al-ʿAishī and the like. (2)

He continued: Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj related that the volunteer fighters (3) together with a number of hadith scholars and jurists brought out Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad, mounted him on a beast, and belted a sword on him—al-Muzakkī said, “I have been told it was a wooden sword”—and they fought (4) the ruler of Nīshāpūr, a man named Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, a Kharijite who had seized the city and ruled as a harsh tyrant. The populace, or most of them, rallied behind him (5) together with Yaḥyā, but the rout (6) fell upon the common folk. Yaḥyā fled to a rural district called Bust (7); Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh learned of his whereabouts and had him brought back.

It is said that most of the leaders who had sided with Yaḥyā turned against him when Aḥmad confronted him, saying, ‘Have I not treated you well? Did I not do such-and-such? Did I not do such-and-such?’ At that time Yaḥyā stood above all the townspeople.

He replied, ‘I was compelled into this; they gathered around me.’

The narrator said: Then the group answered him back, or—