and said, “Raise your izār (lower garment).”
The man replied, “You as well, Ibn Masʿūd—raise your izār.”
He answered, “My shins are thin, and I lead the people in prayer.”
When this reached ʿUmar, he began striking the man, saying, “Do you answer back to Ibn Masʿūd?” (1)

Maʿmar narrated—from Zayd ibn Rufayʿ—from Abū ʿUbaydah—who said: ʿUthmān sent to Abū ʿAbd Allah Ibn Masʿūd to ask him about a man who had divorced his wife and then taken her back after she had entered her third menstrual period. My father said, “How can a hypocrite issue a legal verdict?” ʿUthmān replied, “We seek Allah’s protection from you being like that.” Ibn Masʿūd ruled, “The husband has the stronger claim to her as long as she has not yet bathed after the third menses.” (2)

Qabīṣah related: Sufyān told us, from Abū Isḥāq, from Ḥabbah ibn Juwayn, who said: When ʿAlī arrived in Kūfah, a group of ʿAbd Allah’s companions came to him. He questioned them about him until they realized he was testing them. Then he said, “I say about him what they have said—and even more: he recited the Quran, upheld what it made lawful, forbade what it made unlawful; he is a jurist in the religion, knowledgeable of the sunnah.” (3)

Al-Ḥākim’s Mustadrak records—through the chain of al-Aʿmash, ʿAmr ibn Murrah, Abū al-Bakhtarī, from ʿAlī—that when he was asked, “Tell us about ʿAbd Allah,” he replied, “He mastered the Book and the sunnah, and then reached the limit.” (4)

Al-Aʿmash also reported, on the authority of Abū ʿAmr al-Shaybānī: Abū Mūsā was consulted on a matter of the prescribed shares of inheritance; he erred, and Ibn Masʿūd differed with him. Abū Mūsā then said, “Do not ask me about anything….”