Mutarrif ibn ʿAbd Allāh, reporting from Mālik, said: “Nāfiʿ had a quick temper.” Mālik then added that he used to deal with him gently and with tact.

It is also said that Nāfiʿ had a speech impediment and a foreign accent.

Ismāʿīl ibn Umayyah remarked, “We tried to correct Nāfiʿ’s grammatical slips, but he would not accept it.”

Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī transmitted—on the authority of several scholars—that “the notebook in which Nāfiʿ recorded what he had heard from Ibn ʿUmar was a single parchment scroll, and we would read it aloud.”

Yūnus ibn Yazīd narrated that Nāfiʿ said, “Who will excuse me (1) from your Zuhri? He comes to me and I relate a report from Ibn ʿUmar; then he goes to Sālim and asks, ‘Did you hear this from your father?’ Sālim replies, ‘Yes,’ so he narrates it on Sālim’s authority and leaves me out, even though the original wording is mine.”

Ibn Wahb, from Mālik, said: “I used to visit Nāfiʿ while I was still a young lad. He would come down and relate ḥadīth to me. After the dawn prayer he would sit in the mosque, and hardly anyone came to him; when the sun rose, he would leave. He wore a cloak and would sometimes pull it over his mouth, speaking to no one. I often saw him after the dawn prayer wrapped in a black cloak of his.”

Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways, from his father, said: “We used to frequent Nāfiʿ, but he was ill-tempered. I said, ‘What am I to do with this servant?’ So I left him, while others remained with him and benefited from him.”

Maʿmar related: “Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī would narrate to us from Nāfiʿ while Nāfiʿ was still alive.”

Mālik said: “When Nāfiʿ says something, put a seal on it”—that is, treat it as definitive.

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khirāsh said: “Nāfiʿ is reliable and distinguished.”

Ayyūb also reported that ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz appointed Nāfiʿ to oversee the ṣadaqāt (alms-tax) of Yemen.