Affan ibn Muslim al-Saffar

Affan ibn Muslim, Abu Uthman al-Saffar al-Basri (d. 220 AH), was a client of Udhra ibn Thabit al-Ansari. He settled in Baghdad and related hadith there from Shu'ba, the two Hammads, Sulayman ibn al-Mughira, Hammam ibn Yahya, al-Aswad ibn Shayban and others. Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ubaydallah al-Qawariri, Yahya ibn Ma'in, Abu Khaythama (may God be pleased with him), Qutayba ibn Sa'id, Ali ibn al-Madini, Abu Bakr and Uthman, the two sons of Abi Shayba, Abu Kurayb, and Abu Zur'a and Abu Hatim al-Razi transmitted from him. Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari related from him in his Sahih. Abu Hatim said: he is trustworthy and an imam. ¹

Yahya ibn Ma'in said: if Abu al-Walid and Affan differ about a hadith from Hammad ibn Salama, the word of Affan is to be taken; in a hadith from Shu'ba too, the word of Affan is to be taken, indeed in everything, for Affan is the more precise. He also said: no one is more disagreeable to me, when he opposes me, than Affan. Yahya was asked: who had the better memory, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi or Affan? He said: Abd al-Rahman had the better memory for his own hadith and the hadith of others, and Affan was two years older than him. ¹

Affan was summoned to state a view on the createdness of the Qur'an, and al-Ma'mun used to pay him five hundred dirhams every month. Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, the governor of Baghdad, who was then in Raqqa in the Jazira, wrote to him. When Ishaq asked him, "What do you say?", Affan recited the chapter of Sincerity (al-Ikhlas) through to its end and added nothing to it. A witness related that he was holding the bridle of Affan's donkey when he was summoned. He died on a Thursday, eighteen nights into Jumada al-Akhira, aged seventy-six. It is reported that he died in the year 210, and it is also reported in 220. ¹