and then he said, “Abu al-Ahwāṣ related to me from ʿAbd Allah: ‘Even if you had spent all that is on the earth, you could not have joined their hearts together; but Allah joined them together’ (al-Anfal 63). This verse was revealed about those who love one another.⦗1⦘
Yūnus said: My father used to recite a thousand verses every night.
Abu al-Ahwāṣ also reported that Abu Isḥāq said:
“O young men, take advantage—of your strength and your youth. Hardly a night passes without my reciting in it a thousand verses; I even recite al-Baqarah in a single rakʿah. I fast the sacred months, three days of every month, and Monday and Thursday.”
Aḥmad ibn ʿImrān narrated to us: I heard Abu Bakr say that Abu Isḥāq declared, “My stamina in prayer has left me and I have grown weak, yet when I stand to pray I do not recite less than al-Baqarah and Āl ʿImrān.”
Al-Akhnasī said: al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Sālim al-ʿAbdī narrated to us, “Abu Isḥāq became frail two years before his death; he could not stand unless someone helped him up. Once fully upright he would recite, while standing, a thousand verses.”
Yaḥyā ibn Ādam reported: al-Ḥasan ibn Thābit narrated to us, “I heard al-Aʿmash marvel at Abu Isḥāq’s precise memory of the men from whom he transmitted.”
Al-Ḥasan added: Yūnus ibn Abu Isḥāq narrated to us, “Whenever al-Aʿmash came to my father, I would feel sorry for him because of how long he had to sit with him.”
Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth said: I heard al-Aʿmash remark, “Whenever I was alone with Abu Isḥāq, he would relate to us Ibn Masʿūd’s hadith fresh, without a speck of dust on them.”
Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh said: I asked Abu Isḥāq, “Where were you during the days of al-Mukhtār?” He replied, “I was away in Khurāsān.”