Al-Musayyab ibn Wadiḥ narrated, on the authority of ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Mubārak—or someone else—that he said:
“Sulaymān al-Taymī served as the imam of the congregational mosque in Basra for forty years, performing both the nightfall (ʿishāʾ) and the dawn (ṣubḥ) prayers with one and the same ablution.”
Ḥammād ibn Salamah said: “For twenty years Sulaymān al-Taymī never laid his side upon the ground.”
Mardawayh transmitted from Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ that it was once said to Sulaymān al-Taymī, “You are you—who could equal you?” He replied, “Do not speak like that. I do not know what may yet appear to me from my Lord. I have heard Allah say: ‘And there will appear to them from Allah that which they had never anticipated’ (al-Zumar 39:47).”
It is also related from him that he said: “A man may commit a sin, and in the morning its humiliation still clings to him.”
Saʿīd al-Kurayzī reported from Saʿīd ibn ʿĀmir al-Ḍubaʿī: “Sulaymān al-Taymī fell ill and wept. When he was asked, ‘What makes you weep?’ he replied, ‘I once passed by a Qadarite and greeted him with salām; I now fear having to answer for that.’”
Isḥāq informed us; Ibn Khalīl informed us; al-Taymī informed us; al-Ḥaddād informed us; Abū Nuʿaym narrated to us, saying: ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar narrated to us; Isḥāq ibn Aḥmad narrated to us; Saʿīd ibn ʿĪsā narrated to us; I heard Mahdī ibn Hilāl say:
“I came to Sulaymān and found with him Ḥammād ibn Zayd, Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ, Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal, and our Basran colleagues. He would not relate anything to a man until he had tested him, asking, ‘Is adultery decreed?’ If the man answered, ‘Yes,’ he would make him swear, ‘Is this the religion by which you worship Allah?’ If he swore, Sulaymān would then narrate five hadiths to him.”
Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh said: “Sulaymān al-Taymī never gave any one of us more than five hadiths. There was once a man among us who kept asking him to repeat them, so Sulaymān said, ‘I adjure you by Allah—are you a Jahmite?’ The man replied, ‘How perceptive you are! How did you know me?’”