ʿĪsā ibn Zughbah relates from al-Layth that he said, “Our family traces back to Isfahan, so treat its people kindly.”

Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr said: Someone who heard al-Layth told me that he remarked, “I wrote down a great deal of knowledge from Ibn Shihāb, and I wanted to ride the postal mount to reach him at al-Rusāfah, but I feared that this might not be purely for Allah, so I abandoned the plan. I then visited Nāfiʿ. He asked me, and I said, ‘I am an Egyptian.’
‘From which clan?’
‘From Qays.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty years.’
He said, ‘Yet your beard is the beard of a forty-year-old.’ (1)

Abū Ṣāliḥ said: I travelled with al-Layth to Iraq in the year 161 AH; we set out in Shaʿbān and celebrated Eid al-Aḍḥā in Baghdad.

He went on: While we were in Baghdad, al-Layth said to me, ‘Ask for the house of Hushaym al-Wāsiṭī and say to him, “Your brother al-Layth of Egypt conveys his greetings and asks that you send him something of your books.”’ So I met Hushaym; he handed me some writings, we copied them, and I read them together with al-Layth. (2)

Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf ibn Mulayḥ said: I heard Abū al-Ḥasan the servant—who had gone blind from old age—speaking in the gathering of Yusr. He said, “I was a page in the household of Zubaydah, and al-Layth ibn Saʿd was brought to her to give a legal ruling. I was standing at the head of my lady Zubaydah, behind the curtain. Then al-Rashīd asked him, saying, ‘I have sworn an oath that I possess two gardens.’ (3)

Al-Layth made him swear three times, ‘Do you fear Allah?’ When he had sworn, al-Layth said, ‘Allah says: “For whoever fears standing before his Lord there are two gardens” (al-Raḥmān 55:46).’ Thereupon al-Rashīd granted him numerous estates in Egypt. (4)