Abu ʿAmr ibn Ḥamdān said: “I asked the ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿUqda about al-Bukhārī and Muslim—which of the two was more learned?”

He replied, “Muḥammad was a scholar, and Muslim was a scholar.”

I pressed him several times, whereupon he said, “Abu ʿAmr, Muḥammad may occasionally slip with respect to the scholars of Greater Syria. The reason is that he obtained their books and examined them, so he might cite one of them in one place by his kunya and elsewhere by his personal name, imagining them to be two different men. As for Muslim, mistakes of this sort regarding hidden defects (ʿilal) are very rare with him, because he confined himself to the musnad collections and did not record the maqāṭīʿ or the marāsīl. (1)”

I say: By maqāṭīʿ he meant the legal and exegetical statements of the Companions and Followers.

Abu ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb ibn al-Akhram, the ḥāfiẓ, said: “Nīshāpūr has produced only three men: Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, and Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib.”

Al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Māsarjisī said: I heard my father say, “I heard Muslim say, ‘I compiled this Sahih Musnad from three hundred thousand hadiths that I had heard.’ (2)”

Ibn Mandah said: “I heard Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Akhram say—meaning, in effect—that it has become scarce …"