Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal said:
A woman brought a silk brocade cloak to Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd and offered it to him. He asked, “For how much?”
“Sixty dirhams,” she replied.
He tossed it to his neighbour and said, “How do you value it?”
“One hundred and twenty,” the neighbour answered.
“I consider (1) that to be its price—or something very close to it.”
Then he told her, “Go and consult your family about selling it for one hundred and twenty-five.”
“They have instructed me to sell it for sixty,” she said.
“Go back and ask them again,” he replied.
Saʿīd ibn ʿĀmir al-Ḍubaʿī said: Asmāʾ ibn ʿUbayd narrated to us: I heard Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd say, “Nothing is rarer than two things: an honest dirham and a man who conducts himself according to the Sunnah.”
He also said, “How wretched is capital invested in a muḍāraba (profit-sharing partnership), yet it is still better than taking a loan. I have never put black on white, and I cannot claim of a hundred dirhams that come to me that even ten of them are unquestionably lawful; by Allah, if I said five, I would be truthful.” He repeated these words more than once.
I heard him say as well, “No thief who steals from people is, in my view, worse than a man who goes to a Muslim, buys goods from him on deferred terms, then—when payment falls due—roams the land, turning right and left, seeking (2) provision from Allah; by Allah, he does not earn a single dirham from it except that it is unlawful.”
Al-Aṣmaʿī said: Sakan, the shepherd, told us:
Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd brought me a ewe and said, “Sell it—but first disclaim any liability for the fact that she overturns the fodder and pulls out the stake (3); make that clear before the sale is concluded.”
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muqriʾ said:
Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd once spread out a piece of cloth for a man, whereupon one of those sitting with him exclaimed, “Subḥān Allāh.” Yūnus said, “Fold it up—did you find no other time to say ‘Subḥān Allāh’ than here?”
Jaʿfar ibn Burqān said: “News of Yūnus’s excellence and righteousness reached me, so I wished to…"