hadiths I said, “Where did he get them?” (1)

They were transmitted by Abū ʿAmr ibn Ḥamdān, from Abū Ṭāhir al-Janābadī (2) from him.

Al-Janābadī then remarked: “Al-Maʿmarī used to say, ‘I was the one entrusted with selecting the material for them; whenever a singular report came up, I would go to the shaykh alone and ask him about it.’” (3)

I comment: He was punished with the very opposite of what he intended, and those rarities did him no good; rather, they brought him harm. May Allah disgrace greed.

Ibn ʿUqda said: “I asked ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad about al-Maʿmarī, and he replied, ‘He does not deliberately lie, but I think he associated with people who ‘connect’—that is, who join up the mursal reports.’” (4)

Al-Ḥākim said: “I heard the ḥāfiẓ Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāram say: I was in Baghdad when Mūsā ibn Hārūn rejected those hadiths of al-Maʿmarī and referred the matter to Judge Yūsuf, after Judge Ismāʿīl had first mediated between them. Mūsā ibn Hārūn said, ‘These are anomalous reports from reliable shaykhs; the source notebooks must be brought out for them.’” (5‒6)

Al-Maʿmarī replied: “It is well known that my practice, whenever I encountered a rare hadith with a trustworthy shaykh, was not to mark it. I would simply read it from the shaykh’s book and memorize it, so it is impossible to produce the original notebooks for them.” (7)