anything superior to what you have cited (1).
Wakiʿ said, “No one alive has a better memory for lengthy hadith than Abu Dawud.”
When this remark reached Abu Dawud, he replied, “Tell him: and for short ones as well (2).”
ʿAli ibn Ahmad ibn al-Naḍr related, “I heard Ibn al-Madini say, ‘I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi (3).’”
ʿUmar ibn Shabbah said, “In Isfahan they wrote down forty thousand hadith from Abu Dawud while he had no book with him (4).”
I add: Yunus ibn Habib attended several separate sessions, and these constitute the Musnad that has reached us.
Abu Bakr al-Khatib reported: Abu Nuʿaym told us that Abu Masʿud al-Razi compiled for Yunus ibn Habib ‘The Musnad of Abu Dawud.’
Hafs ibn ʿUmar al-Mihriqani (5) said: Wakiʿ used to say, “Abu Dawud is a mountain of knowledge.”
Ibrahim ibn Saʿid al-Jawhari said, “Abu Dawud made mistakes in a thousand hadith.”
I comment: Ibrahim said this by way of exaggeration; had Abu Dawud erred in even one-seventh of that, they would have declared him unreliable.