He himself was a man of goodness, religious devotion, righteousness, and virtue. Many of the reports he transmits are authentic. At times, however, he transmits weak reports, and even fabricated ones that scholars know to be false. Some hadith masters have questioned his direct reception of hadith. When al-Bayhaqī narrated from him, he would say:

“Abū 'Abd al-Rahmān narrated to us from his original record of the hadiths he had heard.”

Allah willing, neither he nor others like him should be suspected of deliberately lying. Rather, shortcomings in retention and precision allow errors to enter their narrations. Among ascetics and devout worshippers, some are meticulous in hadith transmission, such as Thābit al-Bunānī, al-Fudayl ibn 'Iyād, and others like them. Others have errors and weaknesses in some of their narrations, such as Mālik ibn Dīnār, Farqad al-Sabakhī, and others like them.

Likewise, the sayings, deeds, and spiritual states that Abū 'Abd al-Rahmān transmits from some who discourse on the spiritual path, or that he defends, contain much guidance and knowledge. At times, however, they also contain errors. Some of these arise from a legitimate exercise of independent judgment, while others are unquestionably false. An example is the substantial body of fabricated reports attributed to Ja'far al-Sādiq and others in Haqā'iq al-Tafsīr (The Realities of Quranic Interpretation). Some members of a group also transmitted from him various allusive interpretations: some are sound analogies and appropriate inferences, while others are falsehood and idle talk.