When al-Dāraqutnī was asked about him he replied, “Reliable—an unshakable mountain.”
I add: he compiled a Musnad and a Tārīkh, and he exercised great precision in both.
Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah criticized him, and he in turn took issue with Ibn ʿUthmān. The criticisms exchanged by contemporaries are seldom accorded much weight—especially when rivalry exists between them. Ibn ʿUthmān counted against Muṭayyan roughly three slips; and what of that? Muṭayyan is the sounder of the two, and the endorsement of a scholar such as al-Dāraqutnī is sufficient for him.
He lived ninety-five years.
Al-Khalīlī said of him, “Trustworthy, a ḥāfiẓ.”
I heard several people who had heard Jaʿfar al-Khuldī relate that he said, “I asked Muṭayyan, ‘Why were you given this nickname?’” He answered:
“I was a boy playing with the other children, and I was the tallest among them. We would swim and splash about, and they would plaster my back with mud. One day Abū Nuʿaym saw me and said, ‘O Muṭayyan! Why do you not attend the gatherings of knowledge?’ When I finally set out to study hadith, Abū Nuʿaym had already died. I have written hadith from more than five hundred shaykhs.”
He passed away in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, 297 AH.
- ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Muʿtazz bi-Allāh Muḥammad al-Hāshimī, son of al-Mutawakkil Jaʿfar ibn al-Muʿtaṣim Muḥammad ibn al-Rashīd.