the report actually reached us through Abū Saʿīd, and we have now withdrawn the former attribution. (1)

I said to Ḥamzah, “Was it Ibn ʿUqda who alerted Yaḥyā to the error?”
He hesitated, then replied, “It may have been Ibn ʿUqda—or it may have been someone else.” (2)

With this same chain: the judge Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṣaymarī narrated to us; Abū Isḥāq al-Ṭabarī related to me; I heard Ibn al-Jiʿābī say:

“Ibn ʿUqda entered Baghdad on three separate occasions. On the first, he heard ḥadith from Ismāʿīl al-Qāḍī and others. He came a second time while Ibn Manīʿ was still alive and asked me for some of Ibn Ṣāʿid’s transmissions so that he could examine them. I therefore went to Ibn Ṣāʿid, requested something from him, and he handed me the Musnad of ʿAlī. I was astonished and said to myself, ‘How could he give me this when Ibn ʿUqda is the person who knows it best, given his vast knowledge of the Kufans’ ḥadith?’

“I carried the manuscript to Ibn ʿUqda. He looked through it and then returned it to me. I asked, ‘Shaykh, is there anything in it that strikes you as unusual?’

“He said, ‘Yes, it contains one faulty report.’

“I said, ‘Tell me what it is.’

“He replied, ‘By Allah, I will not point it out to you until I have crossed the bridge of al-Yāsiriyya.’ He feared Ibn Ṣāʿid’s partisans. The days dragged on while I waited for him to fulfil his promise. When he set out for Kūfa, I travelled with him. As we were about to part, I asked, ‘Your promise?’

“He said, ‘Yes. The report in question is the one that runs: from Abū Saʿīd al-Ashajj, from Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah. When, pray tell, could he have heard from him? Abū Saʿīd was born on the very night that Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā died!’

“I took leave of him and went to Ibn Ṣāʿid, informing him of what I had learned. He exclaimed, ‘I shall carve a piece of his flesh onto every tree!’—meaning Ibn ʿUqda. Then Yaḥyā (Ibn Ṣāʿid) returned to his original manuscripts, discovered that the report actually came from another shaykh, not al-Ashajj, on the authority of Ibn Abī Zāʾidah, and corrected the entry accordingly. (3)