“Trustworthy, and among the most prolific transmitters from ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār al-Yamāmī; he heard one thousand hadiths from ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār.”

I say: How could someone who retained this many hadiths from a single shaykh—not to mention what he retained from his other shaykhs—not have a corroborating narrator for any of them? Otherwise, he would be weak (1), for the leading hadith critics impugn a narrator with such statements as, “None of his hadiths is corroborated,” as is well known.

What further confirms the invalidity of the general import of al-Bazzār’s aforementioned statement is that we have found corroborating narrators for him in some of his hadiths. Consider, for example, a hadith in al-Adab al-Mufrad (891), which is narrated by way of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rajāʾ, who said: “ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār informed us …” It is cited in al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah (572) through a group of hadith masters, including al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Ḥibbān, both of whom related it by way of al-Naḍr ibn Muḥammad: “ʿIkrimah narrated to us,” with the same wording.

Another is in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (8/27), through ʿUmar ibn Yūnus from ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār, with a chain from him going back to Anas. It is also in Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān (5761), through al-Naḍr ibn Muḥammad from ʿIkrimah, with the same wording. I cited it from Muslim’s narration in al-Silsilah al-Ṣaḥīḥah under hadith no. 82.

The hidden defect in the hadith is the unknown status of Marthad al-Zimmānī—with the zāy pronounced with an i vowel—the father of Mālik. Al-Dhahabī said:

“He is unknown.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ said:

“Acceptable.”