was simply in need, and so no reproach attaches to him. For that reason Muḥammad ibn Khalaf ibn al-Marzubān the historian composed the following verses about him:
Convey to al-Hārith, the ḥadīth scholar, these words
from a truthful brother whose love is intense.
Lo! From earliest times you have prided yourself
on belonging to the clans of Ḍabbah. (1)
You wrote down ḥadīth from all sorts of people
and, in meeting narrators, you rivalled Ibn Shabbah.
From Yazīd, al-Wāqidī, Rūḥ,
Ibn Saʿd, al-Qaʿnabī, and Hudbah,
then you compiled the reports of Sufyān,
of Mālik, and the Musnad of Shuʿbah;
and from Ibn al-Madīnī—you have long
been spreading his books among the people. (2)
Was it from them that you learned to sell knowledge
and to favour the one who increases your affection? (3)
The poem continues with other couplets. When these lines reached al-Hārith he said, “Let him in—may God slay him! He has exposed me.”
Al-Hārith died on the Day of ʿArafah in 282 AH.
- Tamṭām, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Ghālib al-Ḍabbī al-Baṣrī*
The imām, ḥadīth scholar, ḥāfiẓ, and precise authority, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Ghālib