among the Emigrants who were driven from their homes and their possessions, seeking bounty from Allah and His good pleasure, and giving help to Allah and His Messenger—those are the truthful.’ [al-Hashr: 8]

He then said, “When Allah names a person ‘truthful,’ he cannot possibly lie. They were the ones who addressed him, saying, ‘O successor of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him.’ ”

Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah, the ḥāfiẓ, said, “Abu Bakr was celebrated for outstanding piety; he possessed fiqh and knowledge of historical reports, yet there is some inconsistency in his hadith.”

Abu Nuʿaym al-Faḍl ibn Dukayn remarked, “Among our teachers no one made more mistakes than Abu Bakr.”

Yazīd ibn Hārūn said, “Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh was a virtuous, righteous man; for forty years he never laid his side on the ground.”

Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ḥimmanī narrated that Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh told him, “One night I went to Zamzam and drew up a bucketful; it came out as milk and honey.”

Abu Hishām al-Rifāʿī said, “I heard Abu Bakr say, ‘Created beings are of four kinds: the excused, the informed, the constrained, and the ruined. The excused is the wanderer; the informed is the son of Adam; the constrained is the king; and the ruined is the jinn.’ ”

Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh also said, “The minimum benefit of silence is safety, and that is wellbeing enough; the minimum harm of speech is notoriety, and that is calamity enough.”

ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī transmitted from Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn: “Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAyyāsh and his brother Abu Bakr are both trustworthy.”

Aḥmad ibn Yazīd said, “I heard Abu Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh say, ‘I heard al-Aʿmash…’ ”