—for your own reference; then never ask anyone else about it.

Ibn Maʿīn and Abū Zurʿah both declared, “Tāwūs is reliable.”

Ibn Ḥibbān said, “He was one of the devout worshippers of Yemen and a leading figure among the Successors; his supplications were answered, and he performed forty pilgrimages.”

Wakīʿ narrated—from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāmī (and it is also said: Wakīʿ, from his father, from Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāmī)—who related:

“I asked permission to see Tāwūs in order to consult him on a matter. An elderly man came out to me, and I assumed he was Tāwūs himself. He said, ‘No, I am his son.’ I replied, ‘If you are his son, then your father must have become senile.’ He answered, ‘How can you say that? A scholar never grows senile.’

So I entered, and Tāwūs said to me, ‘Ask—briefly; or, if you prefer, I can teach you in this very sitting the Qur’an, the Torah, and the Gospel.’

I said, ‘If you teach me those, I will never ask you about anything else.’

He said, ‘Fear Allah with a fear that leaves nothing more fearful to you than Him, hope in Him with a hope even stronger than your fear of Him, and love for people what you love for yourself.’”

ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated from his father:

“Tāwūs was praying one cold, cloudy morning when Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf—the brother of al-Ḥajjāj—or Ayyūb ibn Yaḥyā passed by in his retinue while he was in prostration. He ordered that a thick cloak—or elevated mantle—be laid over him. Tāwūs did not raise his head until he had completed his prayer; when he finished with salām, he saw the cloak upon him, shook it off without so much as looking at it, and went straight home. (1)

Layth reported from Tāwūs that he said, ‘Nothing that the son of Adam utters is left unrecorded—even his groans when he is ill.’

Hishām ibn Ḥujayr reported from Tāwūs that he said, ‘The devotional rites of a young man are not complete until he marries.’