Qutbah ibn al-ʿAlāʾ said, “I heard Fudayl remark, ‘The calamity that befalls Qur’an-reciters is self-admiration.’

Fudayl—may Allah have mercy on him—left behind many exhortations and stood on a firm footing in God-fearing devotion. His biography is recorded in The Ornament (al-Ḥilyah) and in the History of Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ʿAsākir.

He lived on the gifts of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Mubārak and other righteous men, and he consistently refused the stipends offered by kings.

Someone related: “We were sitting with Fudayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and asked him, ‘How old are you?’ He replied in verse:

I have reached—or perhaps passed—eighty years;
What hopes remain for me, what can I await?
Long decades have worn me thin:
My bones are brittle, my sight has grown dim.”

I (the author) say: He was a contemporary of Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah in birth, yet he died several years before him.

115 – His son ʿAlī ibn al-Fudayl ibn ʿIyāḍ al-Tamīmī *

He was among the great friends of Allah and passed away before his father.

He transmitted reports from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Rawwād, ʿAbbād ibn Manṣūr, and others.

Narrations from him were carried by Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, his father, Mūsā ibn Aʿyan, and a group of transmitters of anecdotes, as well as Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūnus al-Yarbūʿī.

I have seen one of his hadiths in the Sunan of al-Nasāʾī. It was conveyed to us by Aḥmad ibn Salamah, from Abū al-Faḍāʾil al-Kāghadhī and Masʿūd al-Ḥammāl; they said: “Abū ʿAlī informed us; Abū Nuʿaym informed us; Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn …”