among the students of Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr?’ They answered, ‘Hishām.’

I then asked them, ‘And al-Awzāʿī?’ They replied, ‘After him.’

Abū Zurʿah added, ‘That is because al-Awzāʿī’s notebooks were lost. The most accurate transmitters from Qatādah are Hishām and Saʿīd.’

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd narrated from ʿUbaydullāh al-ʿAyshī (1):

Whenever Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī’s lamp was extinguished, he would toss and turn on his bed until his wife brought him another. She once questioned him about this, and he replied, ‘When the lamp goes out, I remember the darkness of the grave.’

Shādh ibn Fayyāḍ said: Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī wept until one of his eyes deteriorated; it remained open, yet he could scarcely see with it.

It is related from Hishām that he said, ‘I am amazed that a scholar can laugh!’

He would also say, ‘If only we might escape—with nothing for us and nothing against us.’

ʿAwn ibn ʿUmārah reported: I heard Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī say, ‘By Allah, I cannot claim that I have ever set out, on any day, to seek hadith purely for the sake of Allah.’

I (the author) say: By Allah, nor have I. The early generations sought knowledge for Allah’s sake, and so they became noble and turned into imams to be emulated. Others among them sought it at first not for Allah, acquired it, then woke up, held themselves to account, and knowledge itself pulled them toward sincerity midway along the path—just as Mujāhid and others said: ‘We pursued this knowledge while our intention was weak, then Allah later granted us true intention.’

Some of them used to say: ‘We pursued this knowledge for other than Allah, but it refused to be anything but for Allah.’ This too is good, and afterward they disseminated it with a righteous intention.

Yet others pursued it with a corrupt intention, seeking worldly gain and people’s praise; they will have only what they intended. He said