Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd said, “In my estimation, no one rivals Shuʿbah.”

Ibn Mahdī reported: “I heard Shuʿbah say, ‘This preoccupation with hadith is keeping you from the remembrance of Allah, from the prayer, and from maintaining family ties—so will you not desist?’”

Abū Qaṭan related: “I heard Shuʿbah ibn al-Ḥajjāj say, ‘Nothing frightens me more than the prospect of hadith casting me into the Fire.’ He also said, ‘I wish I had been the stoker of a bathhouse and had never become acquainted with hadith.’”

The author comments: “Anyone who scrutinises his own intention in seeking knowledge feels the same fear and merely hopes to emerge with a clean record.”

ʿAffān said, “Shuʿbah was among the devout worshippers.”

Saʿd ibn Shuʿbah recounted, “My father instructed me that when he died I should wash his books, so I washed them.” The author adds: “More than one scholar has done likewise—washing, burning, or burying his writings—for fear they might fall into the hands of a weak transmitter who would add to them or alter them.”

Abū ʿUbaydah al-Ḥaddād narrated from Shuʿbah: “Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl heard only 24 hadiths directly from Anas. As for the remainder, he heard them, and Thābit al-Bunānī confirmed them for him—meaning that Ḥumayd would omit Thābit, practise tadlīs, and say, ‘from Anas.’”

I am convinced that he must have heard from Anas many times that number, for he reports abundantly from him; the Six Books alone contain more than 100 of his narrations.

ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said, “Shuʿbah has the superior memory for individual teachers, whereas Sufyān is superior in recalling subject chapters.”

Abū Dāwūd stated: “Shuʿbah told me, ‘I hold 400 hadiths of Abū al-Zubayr in my chest, but by Allah, I will never narrate from him.’”