Saʿīd ibn ʿĀmir said: Jisr Abū Jaʿfar narrated to us: I once said to Yunus, “I passed by some people arguing about the divine decree.” He replied, “Had their own sins weighed on them, they would not have quarreled over the decree.”

Al-Naḍr ibn Shumayl said: The price of silk brocade once soared in a certain district, and whenever it rose there it would also rise in Basra. Yunus ibn ʿUbayd, who was a dealer in cloth, learned of this and bought merchandise from a man for thirty thousand dirhams. Sometime later he asked the seller, “Were you aware that the goods had become dearer in such-and-such a land?” The man answered, “No; had I known, I would not have sold.” Yunus said, “Then give me back my money and take back yours,” and he returned the entire thirty thousand.

Hammad ibn Salama said: I heard Yunus remark, “The only concern a man should have about his earnings is where he will place them.”

Makhlad ibn al-Ḥusayn, reporting from Hisham ibn Ḥassān, said: “I have never seen anyone who pursued knowledge solely for Allah’s sake except Yunus ibn ʿUbayd.”

ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal related: Ibrāhīm ibn al-Ḥasan al-Bāhilī told us—Hammad ibn Zayd told us—that Yunus ibn ʿUbayd said, “Commit three things to memory from me: none of you should enter upon a ruler to recite the Qur’an to him; none of you should be alone with a woman to recite the Qur’an to her; and none of you should lend his ear to the people of innovation.”

Ḍamrah, from Ibn Shawdhab, said: Yunus and Ibn ʿAwn once met and discussed what is lawful and unlawful, and each of them said, “I do not know of a single dirham in my wealth that is certainly lawful.” I added, “And it is presumed of both of them that they likewise knew of no dirham in their wealth that was certainly unlawful.”

Ibn Shawdhab also said: I heard Yunus (1) declare, “If two traits in a servant are sound, everything else about him will be sound as well: his prayer and his tongue.”