Al-Qaṭṭān said, “In the longer narrations Shuʿbah was even sterner than Sufyān.”
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī reported: It was said to Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd that ʿAbd Allāh ibn Idrīs and Abū Khālid ibn ʿAmmār claim Shuʿbah had dictated to them. He rejected this, saying, “Shuʿbah told me, ‘I never dictated to anyone in Baghdad except to Ibn Zurayʿ (1); he forced me, saying, ‘The Commander of the Faithful has ordered me to write them down.’”
Yaḥyā then added, “Had I pressed him to dictate, he would have done so for me, yet he never dictated while I was present, not once. Khārijah ibn Muṣʿab once came to him when he was an old man and I was the only one with him. He produced a small slip of paper, and Shuʿbah recoiled. Khārijah said, ‘They are only brief excerpts,’ whereupon Shuʿbah settled down.”
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Najdah said: Baqiyyah told me, “Shuʿbah used to dictate to me, for he once said, ‘Write down for me the hadith of Baḥīr ibn Saʿīd.’ I wrote it for him, then asked, ‘How can it be lawful for you to write, yet unlawful for us to write from you?’ He replied, ‘Go ahead and write,’ so I continued to record from him.”
Al-Qawārīrī related: Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ told us, “Shuʿbah dictated these issues to us from his own notebook—meaning the legal questions of al-Ḥakam and Ḥammād.”
One morning he was sitting, glorifying Allah, when he noticed some people who had arrived early and reserved places for others who would come later. When he saw those later arrivals, he rose from his spot and sat at the end of the row.
Ibn al-Madīnī narrated: Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān told us, “These are the Kūfan teachers of Shuʿbah whom Sufyān never met: ʿAdī ibn Thābit, Ṭalḥah ibn Muṣarrif, al-Minhāl ibn ʿAmr, Ismāʿīl ibn Rajāʾ, ʿUbayd ibn al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥakam, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Maysarah, Yaḥyā Abū ʿAmr al-Bahrānī, ʿAlī ibn Mudrik, Simāk ibn al-Walīd, and Saʿīd ibn Abī Burdah.”