I say: Perhaps his father’s remark about him—if it is reliable—meant that he was prone to falsehood in his everyday speech, not in the hadith he transmitted, for in his narrations he is a valid authority. Or it may be that he occasionally lied and resorted to equivocation in conversation; and whoever claims that he never lied at all is reckless. We ask Allah for safety from the missteps of youth. In any case, he later grew old, came to his senses, and committed himself to truthfulness and piety.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Shikhkhīr said: “Ibn Abī Dāwūd was an ascetic, a devout worshipper. On the day he died, roughly 300,000 people—or more—performed the funeral prayer for him.”

He added: “He passed away in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of the year 316 AH. He left three sons—ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, Muḥammad, and Abū Maʿmar ʿUbayd Allāh—and five daughters. He lived for eighty-seven years, and the funeral prayer over him was repeated eighty times.” Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb transmitted this report (1).

The hadith scholar Yūsuf ibn al-Ḥasan al-Tafakkurī said: “I heard al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Bundār al-Zinjānī say: ‘Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ, out of scrupulousness, refused to narrate to beardless youths, and Abū Dāwūd used to hear hadith from him. Abū Dāwūd had a beardless son, so he contrived to fasten a patch of hair to the boy’s face, brought him in, and the boy attended the session. When the shaykh learned of this he said, “Is this how one treats someone like me?”’

Abū Dāwūd replied, ‘Do not censure me. Seat my son among the senior transmitters; if he cannot match them in knowledge, then deprive him of hearing.’ (2)” Its isnād is broken.

Abū Aḥmad ibn ʿAdī said: “I heard ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dāhirī say:”