Abu Bakr said: My father narrated to me, from ʿAli ibn ʿAbd Allah, who said, “We saw nothing of him except his funeral.”

My father also said: Muhammad ibn Saʿid told me, “I recited to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdi, and the same thing happened to him.”

ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Sulaymān said: I heard Abu ʿAbd Allah—meaning Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—declare:

“Knowledge has come to rest with four men: Ibn al-Mubārak, Wakīʿ, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Ibn al-Mubārak is the most comprehensive of them, Wakīʿ the most prolific, Yaḥyā the most precise, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān an assayer of hadith.”

He then added, “I have never seen anyone with a sharper memory or a broader grasp of knowledge than Wakīʿ, nor anyone who more closely resembled the people of devotion.”

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAmmār reported that Yaḥyā ibn Saʿid said:

“Do not look at the text of the hadith itself; look instead at the isnād (chain of transmission). If the isnād is sound, accept the hadith; if not, do not be deceived by it when its isnād is unsound.”

54 – Shuʿayb ibn Ḥarb Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Madāʾinī * (Kh, D, S)

He was an Imām, an exemplar, a devoted worshipper, and a Shaykh of Islam. Abū Ṣāliḥ al-Madāʾinī resided in Mecca, though he was of Khurāsānī stock.

He narrated from: Ismāʿīl ibn Muslim al-ʿAbdī, ʿIkrimah ibn ʿAmmār, Misʿar ibn Kidām, Shuʿbah, Abān ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Bajalī, Ṣakhr ibn Juwayriyah, Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmārah, Sufyān, and Isrāʾīl.