Sufyān and I were waiting for a funeral procession when he said, “O Yaḥyā, take your tablet so that I may relate to you ten hadiths from Ismāʿīl which you have never heard.” He then dictated ten of them to me.

Later, while I was in Mecca—and al-Awzāʿī was also there—Sufyān al-Thawrī met me on the hill of Ṣafā and asked, “O Yaḥyā, did al-Awzāʿī leave last night?” I replied, “Yes.” He said, “Sit down and do not move until I narrate to you ten hadiths from him that you have never heard.” I answered, “What have I personally heard from him at all?” He would not let me go until he had given me ten hadiths from al-Awzāʿī, none of which I had previously known.

Al-Ashjaʿī recounted: “I heard Sufyān say, ‘If a man even thinks of lying about a hadith—while he is inside a house within another house—Allah will surely expose him.’”

Ibn Mahdī said, “I have never seen anyone more knowledgeable about hadith than al-Thawrī.”

Al-Qawārīrī reported that Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān said, “Sufyān al-Thawrī spent the night at my house. I told him two hadiths, one of them from ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd. He rose to pray, and when I lifted the prayer mat I found that he had already written them both down from me.”

Abū Mushir, transmitting from ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus, said: “Sufyān al-Thawrī visited Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Abī Qays al-Azdī and stayed with him for a while. When he came out to us he said, ‘He is a liar.’” Abū Mushir added, “Abū Jaʿfar later executed him for heresy.”

Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Daghūlī related: Muḥammad ibn Mushkān told us—ʿAbd al-Razzaq told us—that Ibn al-Mubārak said, “I would sit with Sufyān al-Thawrī while he was narrating and think, ‘There is nothing left of his knowledge that I have not heard.’ Then I would attend another session, he would narrate again, and I would think, ‘I have never heard any of this knowledge before.’”

Al-Fallās said, “I heard Sufyān ibn Ziyād say to Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān…”