“Were you present at that campaign?”
He answered, “No.”
The man replied, “I was there with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, yet you recall it more accurately than I do.” (1)

Abū Mushir narrated—through Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—that ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān removed Bilāl (2) from the judiciary, appointing Abū Idrīs (3) in his place.

Al-Walīd ibn Muslim, from Ibn Jābir, reported that ʿAbd al-Malik dismissed Abū Idrīs from public preaching but retained him as judge. Abū Idrīs remarked, “You have discharged me from what I desired and left me with what I feared.” (3)

I say: In the early generations the public storyteller held a lofty standing for both knowledge and righteous practice.

Ibn ʿUyaynah said: I heard al-Zuhrī say, “Abū Idrīs informed me that he heard ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit relate from the Prophet ﷺ, who said, ‘Pledge allegiance to me.’” (4)

Ibn ʿUyaynah also said: We preserved from al-Zuhrī, on the authority of Abū Idrīs al-Khawlānī, who reported: “I met Abū al-Dardāʾ—memorizing what I heard from him; and I likewise met ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit and Shaddād ibn Aws, committing their words to memory—but I missed Muʿādh ibn Jabal.” (5)