وَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنْ صَالِحٍ مَوْلَى التَّوْأَمَةِ، فَقَالَ: لَيْسَ بِثِقَةٍ. وَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنْ حَرَامِ بْنِ عُثْمَانَ، فَقَالَ: لَيْسَ بِثِقَةٍ. وَسَأَلْتُ مَالِكًا عَنْ هَؤُلَاءِ الْخَمْسَةِ، فَقَالَ: لَيْسُوا بِثِقَةٍ فِي حَدِيثِهِمْ. وَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنْ رَجُلٍ آخَرَ نَسِيتُ اسْمَهُ، فَقَالَ: هَلْ رَأَيْتَهُ فِي كُتُبِي؟ قُلْتُ: لَا. قَالَ: لَوْ كَانَ ثِقَةً لَرَأَيْتَهُ فِي كُتُبِي.
Translation: Bishr asked Mālik about Ṣāliḥ, the freedman of al-Tawʾamah, and Mālik said, “He is not trustworthy.” He asked about Ḥarām b. ʿUthmān, and Mālik again said, “He is not trustworthy.” Bishr then asked him about all five; Mālik replied, “They are not trustworthy in their hadith.” Bishr asked about another man whose name he had forgotten. Mālik asked, “Have you seen him in my books?” Bishr replied, “No.” Mālik said, “If he had been trustworthy, you would have seen him in my books.”
“In their hadith” limits the judgment to transmission, not every personal quality. Al-Nawawī explains that Mālik’s remark about his own books supports an inference about Mālik’s own favorable evaluation of a narrator he deliberately included; it does not establish every other scholar’s approval or a universal rule for all books.