Nusayr ibn Dhuʿluq said, “Al-Rabiʿ ibn Khuthaym performed supererogatory prayer in the neighborhood mosque only once.” (1)
Al-Shaʿbi said, “Al-Rabiʿ narrated to us, and he was a veritable mine of truthfulness.” (2)
Mundhir related that whenever al-Rabiʿ received his stipend, he would distribute it and keep only what sufficed him. (2)
Yāsīn al-Zayyāt said: Ibn al-Kawwāʾ came to al-Rabiʿ ibn Khuthaym and asked, “Show me someone better than you.” He replied, “Certainly: whoever makes his speech remembrance, his silence reflection, and his walking contemplation—he is better than I.” (3)
Al-Shaʿbi also said, “Al-Rabiʿ was the most scrupulous of ʿAbd Allāh’s companions.” (4)
Ahmad ibn Abī al-Khayr informed us in his book—through Ahmad ibn Muḥammad al-Taymī; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād; Abū Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ; Abū Bakr ibn Khallād; Muḥammad ibn Ghālib; Abū Hudhayfah; Zāʾidah, from Manṣūr, from Hilāl ibn Yasāf, from al-Rabiʿ ibn Khuthaym, from ʿAmr ibn Maymūn, from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Laylā, from a woman of the Anṣār, from Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī—who said:
The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “Is any one of you incapable of reciting a third of the Qur’an in a single night?”
We feared that he might command us to do something beyond our capacity, so we remained silent.
He repeated it three times: “Is any one of you incapable of reciting a third of the Qur’an? Whoever recites ‘Allāhu al-Wāḥidu al-Ṣamad’—Surah al-Ikhlāṣ—has, on that night, recited a third of the Qur’an.” (5)