Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Mustaghfiri said, “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Manda. One day I asked him, ‘How large are the shaykh’s samāʿāt (audition records)?’
He answered, ‘They come to five thousand mann (1).’

I replied, ‘A single mann is roughly the size of two volumes, or one particularly large volume.’

Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar, the ḥāfiẓ, said, “I have written from more than one thousand shaykhs, and among them none was more retentive than Ibn Manda (2).”

The shaykh of Herat (3), Abū Ismāʿīl al-Anṣārī (4), said, “Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Manda is the foremost man of his age (5).”

We were informed by Zāhir al-Thaqafī; al-Ḥusayn al-Khallāl related to us; Abū al-Fawāris al-ʿAnbarī told us—he had heard Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Iskāf say—“I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Manda state:

‘I have met thirty thousand shaykhs: ten thousand from whom I transmit and whose example I follow; ten thousand from whom I transmit but whose example I do not follow; and ten thousand who are my peers. From every single one of them I have memorized not fewer than ten hadiths.’”