in al-Jazīrah, Syria, the Ḥijāz, and Iraq.
Among those who narrated from him were: Abū Ḥātim Ibn Ḥibbān; Abū Aḥmad Ibn ʿAdī; Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn al-Muẓaffar; the judge Abū Bakr al-Abharī; ʿUmar ibn ʿAlī al-Qaṭṭān; Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim; Abū Muslim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Mihrān; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Jarrāḥ al-Miṣrī—better known as Ibn al-Naḥḥās; Abū Bakr Ibn al-Muqriʾ; Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAllān al-Ḥarrānī; Abū ʿAlī Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān ibn al-Sakan; Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sunnī; Abū Shaykh Ibn Ḥayyān; Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Āburī; Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Baghdādī—Ghunder the stationer; Abū al-Fath Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Buraydah al-Azdī—and many others besides them.
His writings include a book entitled al-Ṭabaqāt and another entitled Tārīkh al-Jazīrah, a reading of which we have attended.
Ibn ʿAdī said: “He was knowledgeable about the transmitters and about hadith, and in addition he served as the mufti of the people of Harrān. He set my mind at ease when I asked him about a number of hadith scholars.”
Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim said in al-Kunā: “Abū ʿArūbah al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Mawdūd ibn Ḥammād al-Sulamī heard from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr al-Bajali and Abū Wahb ibn Musarraḥ. Among all those we met, he was one of the most reliable and possessed the best memory; this was due to his fine grasp of hadith, fiqh, and kalām (theology).”
Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir mentioned him in the biography of Muʿāwiyah, saying: “Abū ʿArūbah was extreme in his pro-ʿAlid leanings and strongly biased against the Umayyads.”
I say: Anyone who loves the Two Shaykhs is not an extremist. Rather, whoever impugns them in any way is a rāfiḍī extremist; if he reviles them, he is among the worst of the Rāfiḍah; and if he pronounces them unbelievers, he has returned with disbelief upon himself and deserves disgrace. As for Abū ʿArūbah—how could extremism be ascribed to him when he was a hadith scholar from Harrān? Perhaps he took the Marwānids to task, and for that he may be excused.