As for what follows, indeed you are the sincere seeker and the true aspirant.
When you looked into the book 'Adornment of the Saints' by Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani, you were impressed by the mention of the righteous and the virtuous.
And you saw it as a remedy for the ailments of the soul.
However, you complained about its excessive length due to the chained hadiths that do not suit it, and about speech from some of the mentioned people that is lengthy but of little benefit.
You asked me to abridge it for you and to select its beauties.
I was impressed by you, for you were correct in your view.
However, it did not disclose to you the whole matter.
I will disclose it to you by mentioning its flaws.
Know that the book 'Adornment' contains a good collection of hadiths and stories.
However, it is tainted by things and missed other things.
So the things that it is tainted by are ten.
The first is that this book was composed to mention the reports of the virtuous;
The purpose of mentioning them is to explain their states and morals, so that the seeker may emulate them.
Yet it mentioned the names of a group, then reported nothing of that from them.
Included was what they narrated from others or what they transmitted as hadith.
As he filled the biography of Hisham ibn Hassan with what is narrated by al-Hasan,
Those stories should be included in the biography of al-Hasan, not in the biography of Hisham.
Similarly, he filled the biography of Ja'far ibn Suleiman with what is narrated from Malik ibn Dinar and his peers,
And did not mention anything about him personally.
