he came back out to us and said, “Do you know what the ear once declared?
‘It said: Were it not that I fear being silenced by a reply, I would lengthen myself the way a cloak runs long.’”
Hafs commented, “So many a word has its speaker angered me, yet al-Aʿmash’s remark has kept me from answering back.”
Sulayman ibn Qudamah the judge related to us; Jaʿfar al-Hamdani related to us; al-Silafi related to us; al-Mubarak ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbar related to us; al-ʿAtīqī related to us; Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn ʿAdī related to us; Abu ʿUbayd Muhammad ibn ʿAlī narrated to us; I heard Abu Dawud say:
“It was said to al-Aʿmash, ‘If you had lived in the time of ʿAli, would you have fought alongside him?’
He replied, ‘No—and I would not even enquire about him. I will not fight for anyone for whom I must stake my own honour; how, then, could I stake my religion for him?’”
Abu al-Husayn ibn al-Munadi reported: He saw Anas, though he did not hear anything from him.
He also met Abu Bakrah al-Thaqafi, held his stirrup for him, and Abu Bakrah said to him, “My son, what you have honoured is your Lord, Allah.”
I say: This report is not sound.
Ahmad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Ansari narrated—through Wakīʿ—from al-Aʿmash, who said, “I saw Anas, and nothing kept me from hearing from him except that I was already content with my own teachers.”
Al-Qasim ibn ʿAbd al-Rahman, who met al-Aʿmash, said, “This shaykh is the most knowledgeable of people concerning the views of Ibn Masʿud.”
Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah said, “Al-Aʿmash outstripped everyone in four things: he was their best reciter of the Quran, their most retentive preserver of hadith, their most learned in the laws of inheritance, and he mentioned a fourth trait.”
Hushaym said, “I never saw anyone in Kufah who recited the Quran better than al-Aʿmash.”
Zuhayr ibn Muʿawiyah said, “I did not encounter anyone more intelligent than al-Aʿmash and Mughīrah.”
Ahmad said, “Abu Ishaq and al-Aʿmash are the two foremost authorities of the people of Kufah.”
Abu Dawud al-Sijistani said, “Shuʿbah preserved from al-Aʿmash something on the order of five hundred [reports].”