Makki ibn ʿAbdān said: I heard Muslim say:
“I submitted this book of mine—the Musnad—to Abū Zurʿah. Every report in the book about which he pointed out a defect or some cause for reservation I discarded, and every report about which he said, ‘It is sound and free of defect,’ is what I published. Were the scholars of ḥadīth to keep writing for two hundred years, their efforts would still revolve around this Musnad (1).”

I asked Muslim about ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd (2), and he said, “Reliable, but he was a Jahmī.”

I asked him about Muḥammad ibn Yazīd, and he replied, “Do not write from him.”

I asked him about Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Bishr, and he declared them both trustworthy.

I asked him about Qaṭan ibn Ibrāhīm, and he said, “His ḥadīth should not be written.”

Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim said: Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Najjār narrated to us; I heard Ibrāhīm ibn Abī Ṭālib say:
“I said to Muslim, ‘You have cited extensively in the Ṣaḥīḥ from Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Wahbī, yet his true condition has become evident.’ He answered, ‘They only took issue with him after I left Egypt.’”

I say: In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim there are very few elevated chains—such as that of al-Qaʿnabi from Aflah ibn Ḥumayd, then the ḥadīth of Ḥammād ibn Salamah, and of Hammām, Mālik, and al-Layth. The book contains no elevated chain for Shuʿbah, nor for al-Thawrī, nor for Isrāʾīl, and it is