Ibn Jurayj, Hishām ibn Saʿd, Yazīd ibn Ibrāhīm, Hushaym, Maʿqil ibn ʿUbayd Allāh, and a host of others.

Ibn ʿUyaynah narrated from Abū al-Zubayr who said, “ʿAṭāʾ would put me forward to Jābir, for I preserved the hadith better for them.”

Yaʿlā ibn ʿAṭāʾ related: “Abū al-Zubayr told me a hadith; he was the most clear-minded of people and the best of them in memorization.”

As for Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, whenever he narrated from him he would say, “Abū al-Zubayr related to us—yes, Abū al-Zubayr himself.” Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal commented, “By that he was rating him as weak.”

Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, al-Nasāʾī, and a number of scholars, however, declared him reliable, whereas Abū Zurʿa, Abū Ḥātim, and al-Bukhārī said, “His reports are not to be taken as independent proof.” Even so, al-Bukhārī did cite Abū al-Zubayr in his Ṣaḥīḥ, but always in conjunction with another transmitter.

Abū Aḥmad ibn ʿAdī remarked, “In himself he is trustworthy; any weakness comes from the side of a weak narrator reporting from him.” I say: the same could be said of authorities such as al-Zuhrī and Qatāda. Abū al-Zubayr has been reproached for issues that do not warrant branding him categorically weak, chief among them his practice of tadlīs (concealing an intermediary).

Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Madāʾinī narrated from Warqāʾ: I asked Shuʿba, “Why did you abandon Abū al-Zubayr’s hadith?” He replied, “I saw him weighing out goods and tipping the scales in his own favor.”

Abū Dāwūd transmitted from Shuʿba, who said, “Nothing in this world delighted me more than to meet someone arriving from Mecca so I could question him about Abū al-Zubayr. I myself traveled to Mecca, heard hadith from Abū al-Zubayr, and while I was sitting with him a man posed a question. Abū al-Zubayr answered, but then fabricated a charge against him…"