Yet he was a gracious man: anyone who wished could sit with him and visit him; he never drove anyone away or uttered a harsh word to him. If such a person fell ill, he would go to see him. Because of this and similar conduct they accused him of being a Qadarī.
I say: he would have been entitled to glare in their faces, but perhaps he always assumed the best of people.
His disciple al-Wāqidī said: “He would spend the whole night in prayer and exert himself in worship; had someone told him that the Resurrection would be tomorrow, he could not have increased his effort any further.”
His brother told me: “My brother used to fast one day and break the fast the next, until he began fasting continuously. He was in tight circumstances (1): his evening meal was nothing but bread and olive oil, and he possessed only a single shirt and a hooded cloak with which he faced both winter and summer.”
He added: “Among people he was distinguished for his stern resolve (2) and for speaking the truth. He committed his hadiths to memory and owned no written book. He would go early to the Friday service and keep praying until the imam came out. I have seen him go to the ancestral house near al-Safa to collect its rent, and he never dyed his grey hair.”
When Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan (3) rose in revolt, Ibn Abī Dhiʾb remained in his home until Muḥammad was killed. The governor of Medina at the time, al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd, allotted Ibn Abī Dhiʾb five dinars each month. On one occasion he entered upon the provincial governor—ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī, the uncle of al-Manṣūr—and spoke to him about a certain matter.
ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī said, “I see you are showing off.”
Ibn Abī Dhiʾb picked up a small twig and replied, “Whom would I be showing off to? By Allah, people are more insignificant to me than this.”
When Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān became governor of Medina he sent Ibn Abī Dhiʾb one hundred dinars. From that sum he bought a coarse Kurdish woollen cloak (4) for ten dinars, wore it for the rest of his life, and took it with him to Baghdad,