Abu al-Rabiʿ Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Balkhī said: “I heard Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Mahrawayh al-Rāzī say, ‘I heard ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Junayd say, “I heard Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn say: ‘We criticize certain people, while it may well be that they have already unpacked their luggage in Paradise more than 200 years ago.’”’

I (the author) remarked: ‘Perhaps he actually said ‘a hundred years,’ for such a span would not have been reached in Yaḥyā’s time.’

Ibn Mahrawayh continued: ‘I then went in to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥātim while he was reading to the people from his book al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl (Criticism and Accreditation). I relayed this report to him, and he wept; his hands trembled until the book slipped from them. He kept on weeping and kept asking me to repeat the story (1).’

I said: ‘What overtook him was the dread and concern for his ultimate fate; otherwise, the words of a God-fearing critic about weak transmitters are a form of sincere counsel for the religion of Allah and a defense of the Sunnah.’

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad and a group of others wrote to me; they had heard ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad say: ‘Hibat Allah ibn Muḥammad informed us; Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ghailān informed us; Abū Isḥāq al-Muzakkī (2) informed us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥanẓalī told us; Hārūn ibn Ḥumayd told us; al-Faḍl ibn ʿAnbasah told us; Shuʿbah reported from al-Ḥakam, from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather:

The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘The neighbor has the first claim to the pre-emption of his adjoining house or land’ (3).