I heard my father say, “I wrote [hadith] in the presence of ʿĀrim while he was reading aloud. I also wrote in the presence of ʿAmr ibn Marzūq as he read, and I travelled from Kūfa to Baghdad more times than I can possibly count (1).”

Ibn Ḥibbān said: “Muḥammad ibn al-Mundhir informed me; Muḥammad ibn Idrīs narrated to us; he said: One day Abū Nuʿaym was seated while a man in one corner of the gathering was declaring, ‘Abū Nuʿaym narrated to us; he said: Ibn Jurayj narrated to us; he said … .’ Abū Nuʿaym looked at him and said, ‘The impostor is lying; I never heard a single report from Ibn Jurayj.’ ”

Ibn Ḥibbān said: “Muḥammad ibn al-Mundhir informed me; Muḥammad ibn Idrīs narrated to us; Muʾammal ibn Yahab narrated to us, from Yazīd ibn Hārūn, who said: In Wāsiṭ there was a man who related a few reports from Anas ibn Mālik. Later it was said that he had produced a book attributed to Anas, so we went to him and asked, ‘Do you still have any of those reports?’ He replied, ‘Yes, I have a book from Anas.’ We said, ‘Bring it out.’ When he produced it, we examined it and found that it consisted of the hadiths of Sharīk ibn ʿAbd Allāh (2), yet he kept saying, ‘Anas narrated to us.’ We said, ‘These are the hadiths of Sharīk.’ He responded, ‘You are right—Anas ibn Mālik narrated to us from Sharīk.’ In this way he ruined even the few reports we had taken from him, and we rose and left.”

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim said in his book “The Refutation of the Jahmiyya”: “My father and Abū Zurʿa narrated to us. It used to be reported to us that there was a man whose story is as follows. Abū Zurʿa told me: In Basra there was a man—and I was residing there in the year 230 AH—and ʿUthmān ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Ḍaḥḥāk related from him that he said, ‘If the Qurʾān is not created, then may Allah erase from my breast whatever Qurʾān I have memorised.’ He had been one of the Qurʾān-reciters, but he forgot the Qurʾān to such an extent that when he was told, ‘Say: In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Compassionate,’ he would reply