of the Successors, or shortly after them, when the study of ḥadith was, by common agreement, carefully regulated and narrations were taken only from well-established imams. What, then, would Sufyān—may Allah have mercy on him—have said had he seen the ḥadith students of our own day, with all their blunders and confusion, taking from the ignoramuses of mankind and having Ibn Shahr, a novice of barely a month, read traditions to them (1)?

As for the tents, they are the same as their tents …
Yet I see the women of the tribe unlike the women they once had.

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Yūnus said: Ibn ʿUyaynah narrated to us:
“The first scholar I ever sat with was ʿAbd al-Karīm Abū Umayyah, when I was fifteen years old.”

He also said, “I completed the recitation of the Qur’an when I was fourteen.”

Yaḥyā ibn Ādam said, “I never saw anyone examine a ḥadith without making a mistake—except Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah.”

Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr reported: al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥammād al-Ḥaḍramī narrated to us; Sufyān narrated to us; he said:
“Hammād ibn Abī Sulaymān—though I did not hear this directly from him—said: ‘If a man tells his wife, “You are divorced, you are divorced, you are divorced,” she is separated by the first declaration and the other two are void.’”

Sufyān said, “I once saw Ḥammād come to a physician on horseback.”

Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī said, “Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah is an imam, trustworthy; he was more knowledgeable of the ḥadith of ʿAmr ibn Dīnār than Shuʿbah.”
He added, “Among al-Zuhrī’s transmitters, he and Mālik are the most accurate.”

ʿAbd al-Razzaq said, “After Ibn Jurayj I have not seen anyone whose speech is as eloquent as Ibn ʿUyaynah’s.”

Isḥāq al-Kawsaj transmitted from Yaḥyā that he declared him “trustworthy.”