Kuraib began reading to us al-Maghāzī as transmitted by Yūnus ibn Bukayr. He read for one session, or perhaps two, but some of the ḥadith students started to make a disturbance, so he stopped the recitation and swore that he would never read it to us again. We returned to him and pleaded, yet he refused and said, “Go to ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-ʿAṭāridī, for he used to attend the sessions of audition with us from Yūnus.”

We said, “He has passed away.”

He replied, “Then hear it from his son Aḥmad, for he, too, used to be present with us.”

He pointed us to the house, and we found Aḥmad amusing himself with pigeons. He said to us, “Since the day we heard it I have not looked at it, but it is in some chests that contain books—search for it.”

I got up, looked for it, and found it, covered with pigeon droppings. There was his own certificate of audition together with his father’s, written in an ancient hand. I asked him to hand it over to me and to let me be the one to copy it, and he agreed (1).

I say: This happened in the year two-hundred-and-forty-odd AH. He then lived for a further twenty-some years, and crowds of ḥadith scholars gathered around him.

Muṭayyin al-Ḥaḍramī said: “Aḥmad al-ʿAṭāridī was a liar.”

I say: He meant in his everyday speech, not that he fabricated ḥadith—for nothing of that sort was ever found from him, nor did he transmit anything uniquely on his own authority. What reinforces the view that he was truthful in narration is that he related a few folios of al-Maghāzī through a chain one link lower than his father’s, from Yūnus ibn Bukayr. Al-Khaṭīb (2) praised him, deemed him sound, and al-Bayhaqī used his reports as evidence in his works.

His ḥadith reached both al-Muʾtaman ibn Qumayrah and al-Sibt with a high isnād.

ʿUthmān ibn al-Sammāk said: He died in Kūfa, in Shaʿbān of the year 272 AH.