Salamah ibn ʿAlqamah said, “I kept company with Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd and could not find a single word of his open to censure.”

Ibn Saʿd added, “He never committed anything to writing at all.”

Hammād ibn Zayd said, “Yūnus would finish a hadith, then say, ‘I ask Allah’s forgiveness, I ask Allah’s forgiveness,’ three times (1).”

Al-Aṣmaʿī related from Muʾammal ibn Ismāʿīl:

“A man from Syria came to the silk-merchants’ bazaar and asked, ‘Have you a brocade cloak for four hundred dirhams?’

Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd replied, ‘We have one for two hundred.’

The call to prayer was then given, so Yūnus left for the quarter of Banū Qushayr to lead them in prayer. While he was away, his nephew sold that cloak to the Syrian for four hundred dirhams. When Yūnus returned he asked, ‘What are these dirhams?’

‘The price of that cloak,’ the nephew answered.

Yūnus said, ‘Servant of Allah! This is the very cloak I offered you for two hundred dirhams. If you wish, take it along with two hundred back; and if you wish, leave it.’

The man asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘I am simply one of the Muslims,’ Yūnus replied.

‘I adjure you by Allah—who are you, what is your name?’ the man insisted.

‘Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd,’ he said.

The Syrian exclaimed, ‘By Allah, when we stand facing the enemy and the fighting intensifies, we say, “O Allah, Lord of Yūnus, grant us relief,” or words to that effect…’

Yūnus responded, ‘Glory be to Allah, glory be to Allah.’

Its chain of transmission is mursal.

Umayyah ibn Khālid said: “The wife of Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd once brought him a brocade robe and said, ‘Buy it.’

He asked, ‘For how much?’

‘For five hundred,’ she replied.

He said, ‘It is worth more than that.’

‘Six hundred,’ she offered.

‘It is worth more than that,’ he answered—and he kept on until the price reached one thousand.

Yūnus used to purchase raw silk in Basra and send it to his agent in Sūs. The agent would then send him brocade in return. If the agent wrote to him, ‘Their merchandise is plentiful,’ Yūnus would never buy from them again until he first informed them that his agent had written to tell him their goods were in surplus.