Ibn al-Mubārak said, “I recorded ḥadīth from one thousand one hundred teachers, yet I never wrote from anyone better than Sufyān.”

From Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī: “I never met a man from Kufa whom I preferred to Sufyān.”

Al-Barāʾ ibn Rutaym (1) related: “I heard Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd say, ‘I have never seen anyone superior to Sufyān.’”

He was asked, “But you saw Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, Ibrāhīm, ʿAṭāʾ, and Mujāhid—yet you make this claim?”

He replied, “That is exactly what I am saying: I have never seen anyone better than Sufyān.”

Ibn al-Mahdī said, “My eyes have not seen anyone finer than four men—or four of their like: I never saw anyone who preserved ḥadīth more accurately than al-Thawrī, anyone more austere than Shuʿbah (2), anyone more judicious than Mālik, or anyone more devoted to the welfare of the ummah than Ibn al-Mubārak.”

Wakīʿ transmitted from Shuʿbah that he said, “Sufyān’s memory is better than mine.”

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Rizmah said: A man once told Shuʿbah, “Sufyān has differed with you.” He answered, “You have felled me.”

Ibn al-Mahdī also said, “Wuhayb used to rank Sufyān above Mālik in the matter of memorization.”

Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān declared, “No one is dearer to me than Shuʿbah, and in my eyes none equals him; yet if Sufyān disagrees with him, I adopt Sufyān’s view.”

ʿAbbās al-Dūrī said, “I saw Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn give precedence to no one over Sufyān—in jurisprudence, ḥadīth, asceticism, indeed in everything—among the people of his time.”

Ibn Shawdhab reported: “I heard Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī say, ‘No one who has come to us from Kufa is better than Sufyān al-Thawrī.’”

Ibn al-Mahdī recounted that when Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī saw Sufyān al-Thawrī approaching, he recited, “And We bestowed upon him wisdom while yet a boy” (Maryam 19:12).

(1) Translator’s footnote preserved from the source.
(2) Meaning the celebrated scholar Shuʿbah ibn al-Ḥajjāj.