“this very pillar”—meaning that, in dependability, he is as solid as the pillar before us (1).

Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ghunayyah said: “Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid narrated to us:
‘Qays grew so old that he lived many years beyond one hundred; in the end he became senile and lost his reason.
They therefore bought him a black, non-Arab slave-girl.
Around her neck they placed necklaces of wool, shells, and little copper bells. She stayed with him inside the house, the door locked.
We used to peer at him through the door while she was with him.
He would take those necklaces in his hand, shake them, marvel at them, and laugh in her face.’”
This account was also transmitted by Yaḥyā ibn Sulaymān al-Juʿfī from Yaḥyā (2).

Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr related from Ibn Maʿīn: “He died in the year ninety-seven, or ninety-eight.”
Khalīfah and Abū ʿUbayd said: “He died in ninety-eight.”
Al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī said: “He passed away at the close of the caliphate of Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik.”
Al-Fallās alone deviated, saying: “He died in eighty-four.”

No credence is due the report transmitted by Ḥafṣ ibn Salm al-Samarqandī—who was himself accused—from Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Khālid, from Qays, stating:
“I entered the mosque with my father while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was delivering the sermon; I was seven or eight years old.”

If this were authentic, the Qays in question would have to be Qays ibn ʿĀʾidh, a young Companion (3), for Qays ibn Abī Ḥāzim himself said:
“I came to pledge allegiance to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, but arrived after he had passed away,”
as transmitted by al-Sarrī ibn Ismāʿīl from him (4).

It is also said that Qays was in the army of Khālid ibn al-Walīd when they first entered Syria through the desert of al-Samāwah.