ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Shaqīq said: “One freezing night I rose to leave the mosque with Ibn al-Mubārak. At the doorway he reminded me of a hadith—or I reminded him—and we continued discussing it until the mu’adhdhin called the dawn prayer.

Fadālah al-Nasāʾī said: “When I used to sit with the scholars in Kūfah, if they disagreed about a hadith they would say, ‘Take us to that physician so that we may ask him’—meaning Ibn al-Mubārak.”

Wahb ibn Zamʿah al-Marwazī said: “Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd once narrated a hadith from Ibn al-Mubārak. People said to him, ‘Abū ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, you relate from ʿAbd Allāh even though you have met Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir?’ He grew angry and replied, ‘I am the equal of ʿAbd Allāh! I carry the knowledge of the people of Khurāsān, of Iraq, of the Ḥijāz, of Yemen, and of Syria.’”

Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Ḥawārī said: “A man from Banū Hāshim came to ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak to hear hadith from him, but he refused to narrate to him. The nobleman said to his servant, ‘Let us go; Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān does not wish to relate anything to us.’ When he rose to mount, Ibn al-Mubārak came and held his stirrup. The man said, ‘Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, you do this for me yet will not narrate to me?’ He replied, ‘I will humble my body for you, but I will not humble the hadith for you.’”

Al-Musayyab ibn Wāḍiḥ reported that he heard Ibn al-Mubārak—when a man asked him from whom one should take knowledge—say: “A man may meet a trustworthy narrator who himself transmits from someone unreliable, and another may meet an unreliable narrator who transmits from someone trustworthy. What is required is a trustworthy transmitter from a trustworthy transmitter.”

ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī said: “I heard Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād say, ‘I have never seen…’”