where he said: “With the jīm bearing a ḍammah, the fāʾ sukūn, and a rāʾ at the end. I believe it to be a place in Ifrīqiyah, and Allah knows best. He narrated hadith, and the last person to narrate from him was Jabrūn ibn ʿĪsā ibn Zayd. He died in 237 AH.”

It likewise appears with the jīm bearing a ḍammah in handwriting in al-Dhahabī’s al-Ḍuʿafāʾ, in the Ẓāhiriyyah manuscript, as well as in the two printed editions of al-Mīzān. In the manuscript, however, it appears with an undotted ḥāʾ, beneath which is a small ḥāʾ. In al-Mushtabih, it is recorded with a ḥāʾ bearing a ḍammah, and al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar followed him in al-Tabṣīr, saying (1/340): “And with an undotted ḥāʾ bearing a ḍammah: Yaḥyā ibn Sulaymān al-Ḥafrī al-Maghribī …”

In his important work Tawḍīḥ al-Mushtabih (1/112/2), al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī critiqued al-Dhahabī, saying: “Ibn Mākūlā and al-Farḍī preceded the author in assigning this Yaḥyā this attribution; Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ likewise followed them without independent verification in Tartīb al-Madārik, as did Ibn al-Jawzī. Yet I found it in Tārīkh Ibn Yūnus, in al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsākir’s handwriting and in his audition record, with a dotted jīm bearing a ḍammah. I found it likewise in Abū al-Qāsim Ibn Mandah’s al-Mustakhraj. This is closer to what is correct, and perhaps it is an attribution to Jafrat ʿUtayb, the name of a tribe in the lands of the Maghrib. Then I found that some mentioned that he was called al-Ḥafrī—with the undotted letter—as al-Amīr and others stated, because his house stood by a pit in the lane of Umm Ayyūb in al-Qayrawān.” End quote.

I say: From the totality of the foregoing, and especially from Ibn Nāṣir al-Dīn’s final statement, it appears that both attributions are sound: al-Jafrī, with a jīm, and al-Ḥafrī, with a ḥāʾ. The former is an attribution to a place in al-Qayrawān, and the latter to the pit that was near his house. Allah knows best.

Moreover, al-Dhahabī declared this Yaḥyā trustworthy in al-Ḍuʿafāʾ, and said in al-Mīzān: “I know of no fault in him.”