and Abū al-Mughīrah, al-Khawlānī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥimyar, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṭarāʾifī, and a number of others.

He travelled in search of hadith, took great care in collecting it, lived to an advanced age, and people came to depend on him.

Those who narrated solely from him were: al-Nasāʾī—outside the Sunan—Mūsā ibn Hārūn, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Sarrāj, Yaḥyā ibn Ṣāʿid, Ibn Jawṣā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm, Abū al-Burayk Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn al-Uṭrābulusī, Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb al-Azraq, Khaythamah ibn Sulaymān, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar ibn Mallās, Abū al-Daḥdāḥ Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad, and others.

Ibn Abī Ḥātim said, “In our estimation, he is truthful.” (1)

Ibn ʿAdī said, “Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf considered him weak and spoke against him, and Ibn Jawṣā likewise deemed him weak.”

Ibn ʿAdī also remarked, “People have transmitted what he related, yet he is not someone whose narrations are relied upon.”

ʿAbd al-Ghafir ibn Salāmah stated, “He was our neighbour, the muezzin of the congregational mosque, and he used to dye his beard red. Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf, my uncle, and our companions would say he was a liar, so we never received anything from him.” (2)

He further said that Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf declared, “He is a liar. I saw him in the marketplace of al-Rustan drinking with beardless youths; he was vomiting while I looked down at him from the window of a shop in which I had goods, in the year 219 AH, during the days of Abū al-Hirmās. (3) They used to call him ‘al-Ghudāf’. (4),