When death drew near to Abū Bakr, his sister began to weep. He said to her, “Why are you crying? Look at that corner over there; your brother has completed the Qur’an in it eighteen thousand times.”
Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah said: Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh told me, “I saw the present world in a dream as a hideous old woman.”
Ibn Abī al-Dunyā narrates from Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Qurashī—who, God willing, is his father—who said: Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh remarked, “I wish I could be forgiven for what I did in my youth, even if both my hands were cut off.”
Abū Bakr was asked about the Qur’an, and he replied, “It is the speech of Allah, uncreated.”
And from Abū Bakr: “Our imam (1) pronounces a hamzah in ‘muʾṣadah’ (2), and I feel like blocking my ears whenever he does so.”
Aḥmad ibn Yūnus said: I said to Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh, “I have a neighbour who is a Rāfiḍī and has fallen ill.” He answered, “Visit him as you would visit a Jew or a Christian; do not intend any reward in it.”
Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb al-Ṣaffār reported: I heard Abū Bakr say, “I was born in the year 79, I lived on the stipend allotted by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and for five months I drank no water at all—I drank nothing but nabīdh.”
I say: Nabīdh is the infusion of dates, or of raisins, and the like.