in making such a statement among the Muslims! Consult whichever biographical works on narrators you wish, and you will not find in them this unrestricted declaration of weakness—let alone one coupled with the claim that it is well-known! The most that has been said of him is that he made mistakes. And who does not make mistakes apart from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him?

Nevertheless, Hammad was known for precision and exactitude in what he narrated from certain Successors, among them Thabit al-Bunani, who narrates this hadith in Muslim and elsewhere, as you have seen. Imam Ahmad said in al-Ilal (1/263 and 2/222):

“Hammad ibn Salamah was the most reliable of all people in narrating from Thabit al-Bunani.”

Ibn al-Madini and others said the same.

Were the esteemed reader to consult his biography in the more extensive biographical and historical works, he would see the most astonishing praise and exaltation of his standing. It is enough to cite the words of the imam of historians—one who neither shows favoritism nor compromises—al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi. He included him in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz and Siyar A'lam al-Nubala', describing him as a hadith master, imam, exemplary scholar, and Shaykh al-Islam; then he said:

“I say: He was an ocean of knowledge. He had occasional errors amid the vastness of what he narrated, yet he was a truthful narrator and an authority. Alongside his preeminence in hadith, he was a great imam in Arabic, an eloquent jurist, and a leading authority in the Sunnah.”

Ibn Hibban said in al-Thiqat (6/216):

“Among his contemporaries in Basra, none equalled him in merit, religious devotion, knowledge, ascetic worship, steadfastness upon the Sunnah, and forceful refutation of the people of innovation. During his lifetime, none disparaged him except a Qadari—one who denied divine decree—or an innovating Jahmite, because of the authentic sunnahs that he openly conveyed and which the Mu'tazilites rejected.”