Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī said (1): “Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Najdah al-Ḥawṭī narrated to us; Abū al-Mughīrah narrated to us; ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Samṭ narrated to us; Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī al-Hāshimī narrated to us from his father, from his grandfather, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said:

‘For one of you to raise, after the year one hundred and fifty-four, a litter of puppies is better for him than to raise a child from his own loins.’

Our teacher, the ḥadith master al-Dhahabī, remarked (2): “This ḥadith is fabricated, and the person accused of forging it is this ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Samṭ.”

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād al-Khuzāʿī, the teacher of al-Bukhārī, said in his book Al-Fitn wa’l-Malāḥim (3): “Abū ʿAmr al-Baṣrī related to us, from Abū Bayān al-Maʿāfarī, from Badīʿ, from Kaʿb, who said: ‘When the year one hundred and sixty arrives, the forbearance of the forbearing and the discernment of the discerning will wane.’”

Another report containing an allusion to Imām Mālik ibn Anas:

Al-Tirmidhī narrated (4)—through Ibn ʿUyaynah, from Ibn Jurayj, from Abū al-Zubayr, from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayrah—that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:

‘A time is coming when people will strike the flanks of their camels in pursuit of knowledge, yet they will find no one more knowledgeable than the scholar of Madinah.’ (5)

Al-Tirmidhī then commented: “This ḥadith is ḥasan; it is the narration of Ibn ʿUyaynah. It has been reported from him that he said, ‘He is Mālik ibn Anas,’ and ʿAbd al-Razzāq said the same.”

I say: Mālik—may Allah have mercy on him—died in 179 AH.

Another report hinting at Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī:

Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī said (6): “Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān narrated to us, from al-Naḍr ibn Maʿbad al-Kindī—or al-ʿAbdī— …”