He transmitted reports from Abu Bakr, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, Muʿādh ibn Jabal, Ibn Masʿūd, and ʿAlī.

Those who narrated from him include Ḥabīb ibn Abī Thābit, al-Zuhrī, Abū al-Zubayr al-Makkī, ʿAlī ibn Zayd ibn Judʿān, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khuthaym, Maʿrūf ibn Kharrabūdh, Saʿīd al-Jurayrī, Fiṭr ibn Khalīfah, and many others besides them.

Maʿrūf said: “I heard Abū al-Tufayl say, ‘I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ while I was a young lad; he was circling the House on his mount, touching the Black Stone with the tip of his staff.’” (1)

Muḥammad ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī related—through ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Hamdānī—that Abū al-Tufayl once entered upon Muʿāwiyah. Muʿāwiyah asked, “After all these years, how much of your bereavement over ʿAlī remains?” He replied, “The grief of a barren old woman and a childless old man.” Muʿāwiyah then said, “And how is your love for him?” He answered, “Like the love of Moses’ mother for Moses, and to Allah I complain of my own shortcomings.” (2)(3)

It is also narrated from Abū al-Tufayl that he said, “I lived through eight years of the Messenger of Allah’s ﷺ life.” (4)

It is reported that he used to recite:

I have left in the quiver but a single arrow—
it will be loosed, or the archer will break it. (5)

And it is said that Abū al-Tufayl was the standard-bearer of al-Mukhtār when he rose in Iraq.