Al-Silafī said: I asked al-Muʾtaman about Rizq Allah, and he replied, “He is an imām—in learning, in character, and in the fatherly care he gives—and whatever is said against him is merely the spite of his enemies (1).

Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAbdarī said: “Abū Muḥammad was refined and gentle, fond of stories and witticisms; I know nothing of him but good (2).”

Ibn Nāṣir said: “I have never seen an eighty-seven-year-old shaykh with a better demeanor, guidance, upright bearing, eloquence, charm in preaching, or swiftness of reply than he (3). He was, as he was styled, an adornment of Islam—an honor to the people of Iraq in particular and to all lands in general. We have seen no one like him. He was already foremost when he was but twenty—so what of him now? He also enjoyed great esteem with the caliphs.

Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Saʿd, the Shaykh of Shaykhs, said: “Whenever Ibn al-Khāḍibah recited to Rizq Allah the hadith—namely, ‘Whoever shows hostility to a friend of Mine…’—Rizq Allah would grasp his cheek, give it a playful pinch, and say, ‘O Abū Bakr, does anything sprout beneath your love besides this?’”

I was informed by Ibn al-Akhdar; al-Zāghūnī narrated to us that Rizq Allah recited for himself:
Do not ask me of the tribe that has gone away;
on the day we parted I was drunk with grief.
O my two companions, in my longing at Naʿmān,
will Laylā’s union ever return as before?
What harm if they had lingered, that day we parted,
only the time it takes a mourner to don his shroud? (4)