Salm ibn Qutaybah said: I would sometimes hear Shuʿbah say to the hadith students, “O people! Every time you move forward in hadith, you fall back in the Quran.”

Abu Dawud reported: Shuʿbah told me, “Stay close to Warqaʾ (1), for you will not meet his equal—he meant in righteousness—until you come back.”

Ismaʿil ibn Abi Karima narrated from Yazid ibn Harun that Shuʿbah used to say, “Record hadith only from someone who is well-to-do,” even though he himself was poor and supported by his nephews.

Labid ibn Abi Labid al-Sarkhasi transmitted from al-Nadr ibn Shumayl: I heard Shuʿbah say, “Come, let us backbite for Allah’s sake,” intending thereby to discuss the status of the shuyūkh (senior transmitters).

Yahya ibn Maʿin related that Ḥajjaj al-Aʿwar said: “Sulayman ibn Mujalid wrote me a letter of introduction to Shuʿbah, so I went to him and asked about the reports of Hammad from Ibrahim. He would narrate them to me but allowed no one to write in his presence. I would question him and then say, ‘al-bawl, al-bawl (I need to relieve myself).’ He replied, ‘By Allah, this is nonsense; you only want to recall the chapters.’”

Abu Jaʿfar al-Darimi said: I heard al-Nadr ibn Shumayl say—or it was said to him—that Shuʿbah remarked, “I came to Abu al-Zubayr while his thigh was uncovered, so I told him, ‘Cover your thigh.’ He answered, ‘There is nothing wrong with that.’ Because of this I did not transmit from him.”

Al-Nadr added, “I myself heard him say: ‘I came to Abu al-Zubayr when he was in dire need, and I was too embarrassed to ask him, for I had nothing to give him.’”

I say: He did, in fact, receive hadith from him in Mecca, and from ʿAmr ibn Dinar as well.

ʿUbayd Allah ibn Jarir ibn Jabalah said: I heard Saʿd ibn Shuʿbah say, “My father instructed me in his will that when he died I should wash his books, so I washed them. And whenever books accumulated with my father from”