Aḥmad al-Dawraqi narrated, on the authority of Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh, who said:

“Whenever I looked at al-Taymī, he appeared to me like a youthful lad who had just taken up worship. People were of the view that he had learned his devotion from Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī.”

Muthannā ibn Muʿādh likewise reported from his father:

“I could liken the worship of Sulaymān al-Taymī only to the worship of a young man at the very beginning of that vigor and zeal.”

Al-Walīd ibn Ṣāliḥ transmitted from Ḥammād ibn Salamah:

“We never visited Sulaymān al-Taymī at any time in which Allah could be obeyed without finding him already engaged in obedience. We even thought that he did not know how to disobey Allah.”

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said: “Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd used to praise Sulaymān al-Taymī and give him precedence over ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal. In his possession were fourteen hadith from al-Taymī on the authority of Anas, yet he would not cite his personal reports—that is, those from al-Taymī—among the hadith of Anas.

He also said: ‘In my opinion the original collection of al-Taymī has been lost.’”

Ibn al-Madīnī stated: I heard Yaḥyā say, “Al-Taymī used to narrate to both the eminent and the common five hadith at a time.”

I asked, “Did he allow you to write them down?”

He replied, “No. If someone repeated them back to him, he would count that for him, and I would repeat them to him and he would count them for me.”

By his words “I repeat them to him” he meant that he restated the hadith in order to commit them to memory, whereupon al-Taymī would reckon it for him as one of those five.

Khālid ibn al-Ḥārith reported that Sulaymān al-Taymī said, “If you were to take every scholar’s dispensation, every form of evil would converge in you.”

Ghassān ibn al-Mufaḍḍal narrated from Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl:

“Suhaymān al-Taymī once borrowed a fur cloak from a man, wore it, and then returned it. The man said, ‘The scent of musk lingered in it ever afterwards.’”