in many cases declaring trustworthy his own shaykhs, whom he knows directly, or one of their shaykhs. Thus, in this case or in the preceding one, he declares someone trustworthy only on the basis of his own knowledge of him, or through his shaykhs, as is apparent. Maḥmūd al-Marwazī belongs to this category. For when Ibn Ḥibbān listed him in al-Thiqāt (9/202–203), he said: “The people of Marw narrated from him.” A group narrated from him; and if the researcher consults al-Tahdhīb, he will find the names of ten people who narrated from this Maḥmūd, most of them, naturally, leading trustworthy hadith masters, such as Imam al-Bukhārī, as mentioned above, Aḥmad ibn Ḥamdūn al-Aʿmashī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdawayh, and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Daghūlī.

When Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīlī al-Qazwīnī included his biography in his book al-Irshād fī Maʿrifat ʿUlamāʾ al-Ḥadīth, he said (3/900): “Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī and his son ʿAbd Allāh heard from him, and the last to narrate from him was Muḥammad ibn Ḥamdawayh al-Marwazī...” I say: He was therefore one of the hadith scholars and among the shaykhs of leading hadith masters. Can it then be said of someone like him, “No one besides Ibn Ḥibbān declared him trustworthy”?!

Moreover, Ibn Abī Ḥātim said (4/1/291): “He was trustworthy and truthful.” Two further matters confirm what has preceded, namely, that he is trustworthy and that his reports may be cited as evidence. The first is that al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Khalīlī himself cited him as evidence when establishing that the hadith, “The Taking Away of Knowledge,” recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs and traced by me in al-Rawḍ (579) through several chains from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr, attributed to the Prophet—the Ḥāfiẓ argued that it has