better than you: ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with him.

Al-Manṣūr thereupon lowered his head—while al-Musayyib still held the sword—then said, “This man is the finest of the people of the Ḥijāz.”

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “Ibn Abī Dhiʿb is reliable.” He once entered upon Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, and the fact that he was speaking the truth to him did not faze him; he said, “Oppression is rampant at your gate—and Abū Jaʿfar is Abū Jaʿfar.”

Musʿab al-Zubayrī said, “Ibn Abī Dhiʿb was the jurist of Madinah.”

Al-Baghawī reported: Hārūn ibn Sufyān narrated to us; he said: Abū Nuʿaym said, “I performed the pilgrimage the year Abū Jaʿfar performed it, and with him were Ibn Abī Dhiʿb and Mālik ibn Anas. Abū Jaʿfar summoned Ibn Abī Dhiʿb and seated him beside him at Dār al-Nadwa. He asked, ‘What do you say about al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn Ḥasan’—meaning the governor of Madinah? He answered, ‘He strives to act justly.’

“Abū Jaʿfar then asked, ‘And what do you say about me?’—he put the question twice. Ibn Abī Dhiʿb replied, ‘By the Lord of this Sacred House, you are indeed unjust.’ Rabiʿ the chamberlain seized him by the beard, but Abū Jaʿfar said, ‘Let him be, O son of al-Lakhnāʾ.’(1) He then ordered that three hundred dinars be given to Ibn Abī Dhiʿb.”

Muḥammad ibn al-Musayyib al-Arghiyānī (2) said: “I heard Yūnus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā say, ‘I heard al-Shāfiʿī say, “No one has slipped away from me so that I regretted it as I regretted missing al-Layth ibn Saʿd and Ibn Abī Dhiʿb.”’”

I say: As for failing to meet al-Layth, that is indeed the case; but as for Ibn Abī Dhiʿb, al-Shāfiʿī cannot be faulted for not travelling to him, for Ibn Abī Dhiʿb died when al-Shāfiʿī was nine years old.

ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: “I heard Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd say: Ibn Abī Dhiʿb…”