—who died some twenty-odd years before al-Zuhrī—and ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, Qatādah ibn Diʿāmah, Zayd ibn Aslam, a number of his contemporaries, Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī, Abū al-Zinād, Ṣāliḥ ibn Kaysān, ʿUqayl ibn Khālid, Muḥammad ibn al-Walīd al-Zubaydī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥafṣah, Bakr ibn Wāʾil, ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥārith, Ibn Jurayj, Jaʿfar ibn Burqān, Ziyād ibn Saʿd, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Mājishūn, Abū Uways, Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, al-Awzāʿī, Shuʿayb ibn Abī Ḥamzah, Mālik ibn Anas, al-Layth ibn Saʿd, Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Fulayḥ ibn Sulaymān, Ibn Abī Dhīʾb, Ibn Isḥāq, Sufyān ibn Ḥusayn, Ṣāliḥ ibn Abī al-Akhdar, Sulaymān ibn Kathīr, Hishām ibn Saʿd, Hushaym ibn Bashīr, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, and many others besides them.
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: He has roughly 2,000 hadiths.
Abū Dāwūd stated: His narrations number 2,200 hadiths, half of which are musnad reports.
Abū Ṣāliḥ related from al-Layth ibn Saʿd, who said:
“I have never seen a scholar more comprehensive than Ibn Shihāb. If he spoke on matters of exhortation, you would assume that was his sole expertise; if he spoke about the Arabs and their genealogies, you would think he excelled only in that; and when he spoke about the Quran and Sunnah, that too was his field.”
Al-Layth also said: Ibn Shihāb travelled to ʿAbd al-Malik in the year 82 AH.
Al-Dhuhlī reported: Abū Ṣāliḥ narrated to us, saying: al-ʿAṭṭāf ibn Khālid narrated to us, from ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Farwah, from Ibn Shihāb, who said:
“The people of Medina were struck by want during the turmoil of ʿAbd al-Malik—a hardship that spared no one. It seemed to me that our household suffered more than anyone else. I reflected, ‘Is there anyone I might go to?’ Then I said to myself, ‘Provision is in the hand of Allah.’
“So I set out for Damascus. The next morning I entered the mosque and made my way to the largest gathering I could see, and I sat with them. While we were there, an emissary of ʿAbd al-Malik arrived. He told a story whose details will come later, and informed us that ʿAbd al-Malik had allotted me a stipend.”