Rather, I found ʿAli ibn al-Madini—al-Bukhari’s teacher—denying, in his treatise ʿIlal al-Hadith wa Maʿrifat al-Rijal (Hidden Defects in Hadith and Knowledge of Narrators) (p. 69), that he had heard anything from him. He said: “I do not think that he heard anything from him.” Al-ʿAlaʾi cited this from him in his work on mursal reports (p. 197) and endorsed it.

However, I found a supporting narration for the hadith through Ishaq ibn Saʿid: ʿAbd al-Karim narrated to us from al-Hasan, from Anas, attributed to the Prophet, with the wording: “Indeed, the worst rulers are the ruthless.” Al-Bazzar recorded it (2/238/1604) and said: “We know of no one who narrated it with this wording except ʿAbd al-Karim, who was from Basra. It was also narrated from other than Anas: Abu Barzah and ʿAʾidh ibn ʿAmr narrated it.”

I say: This ʿAbd al-Karim may be Ibn Abi Umayyah, as al-Haythami decisively maintained (5/239–240), saying: “He is weak.” It is also possible that he was someone else. For, after mentioning al-Hasan al-Basri in the biographical entry for Ibn Abi Umayyah, Ibn Abi Hatim states in al-Jarh (3/1/61): “ʿAbd al-Karim narrated from al-Hasan; Muhammad ibn Salam heard from him. My father said: ‘He is unknown.’” The same is stated in al-Mizan and al-Lisan. Allah knows best which of the two he was, for neither of their biographical entries mentions the narrator of this hadith from him here, namely Ishaq ibn Saʿid—the Qurashi, Umayyad, Kufan. It is possible that the two were one and the same.