the time of al-Hasan al-Basri.

Abu ʿUbaydah said, “He was the most knowledgeable of all people with respect to the variant readings, the Arabic language, poetry, and the historical exploits of the Arabs. His notebooks once filled a room up to the ceiling, but after he turned to asceticism he burned them.”

He was counted among the Arab nobility; al-Farazdaq and others composed eulogies for him.

Yahya ibn Maʿin said, “He is reliable.”

Abu Hatim said, “There is no problem with him.”

Abu ʿAmr al-Shaybani said, “I have never seen anyone like Abu ʿAmr.”

Abu al-ʿAynaʾ relates, on the authority of al-Asmaʿi: Abu ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlaʾ once told me, “If it were possible for me to pour everything that is in my chest of knowledge into yours, I would do so. I have memorised concerning Qurʾanic sciences such things that, were I to write them down, al-Aʿmash would be unable to carry them. And were it not that I am permitted to recite only what has already been recited, I would recite the reading of such-and-such…”—and he mentioned specific modes of recitation. (1)

Naṣr ibn ʿAlī al-Jahḍamī reported, through his father, from Shuʿbah: “Observe whatever Abu ʿAmr selects for his recitation and write it down, for he will one day become the people’s master.”

Ibrahim al-Harbi and others said, “Abu ʿAmr was among the people of the Sunnah.”

Al-Yazidi and another authority said, “ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd spent a whole year preaching on the divine threat. Abu ʿAmr remarked to him, ‘Your grasp is indeed tongue-tied, for you have treated the warning attached to what is gravest as though it were the same for what is slightest…’”