Al-Khāliqī Abū Hammām reported:

Bishr ibn Manṣūr said, “Limit how many people you get to know, for you do not know what may come to pass. If tomorrow should bring—meaning a scandal—then only a few will know you.”

He also related—and Sahl ibn Manṣūr told us:

“Bishr was once praying at length while a man standing behind him kept watching. Realizing this, Bishr said to him after he finished, ‘Do not be impressed by what you have just seen of me; Iblīs worshiped Allah for ages in the company of the angels.’”

Bishr ibn Manṣūr further said, “Never have I sat with anyone and then left but that I realized that had I not sat with him, it would have been better for me.”

Siyyār ibn Ḥātim reported: Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal told us,

“I saw Bishr ibn Manṣūr in a dream and asked him, ‘What has Allah done with you?’ He answered, ‘I found the matter far easier than what I used to impose upon myself.’”

I say: This Imām—may Allah have mercy on him—died in 180 AH, being a little over seventy years old.

In his time there was also Bishr ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥannāṭ, a Kufan who related only a few narrations (1). Among those who transmitted from him were ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī and Abū Saʿīd al-Ashajj. The word al-Ḥannāṭ is spelled with an unpointed ḥāʾ followed by a nūn.

There was likewise Bishr ibn al-Mufaḍḍal al-Baṣrī (2), the ḥāfiẓ (hadith master), and Bishr ibn al-Sarī, the eloquent preacher (3), also from Basra.