Abū Jaʿfar al-Tirmidhī said: I heard al-Rabīʿ relate, “Al-Shāfiʿī suffered from hemorrhoids and kept a felt cushion stuffed with fenugreek on which he would sit. Whenever he mounted his riding animal, I would take that cushion and walk behind him. One day a man handed him a slip of paper that read, ‘I am a grocer; my entire capital is one dirham, and I have just married—so help me.’ He said, ‘Rabīʿ, give him thirty dinars and apologize to him for me.’ I replied, ‘May Allah set things right for you; ten dirhams would suffice him.’ He retorted, ‘Shame on you! What could he do with only ten? Even thirty will barely cover this or that,’ and he began listing the items a bridegroom must provide. ‘Give it to him.’” (1)

Ibn Abī Ḥātim reported: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ibrāhīm told us, Muḥammad ibn Rūḥ narrated to us, al-Zubayr ibn Sulaymān al-Qurashī—on the authority of al-Shāfiʿī—who said: “Harthamah came and conveyed to me the greetings of the Commander of the Faithful Hārūn, saying, ‘He has ordered that five thousand dinars be given to you.’ The money was brought, so I summoned a barber, had my hair trimmed, and gave him fifty dinars. Then I took sheets of paper, tied up portions of the money, and distributed them among the Quraysh who were present and those in Mecca, so that I returned home with less than one hundred dinars.” (2)

Muḥammad ibn Bishr al-ʿAkarī said: I heard al-Rabīʿ report: “Al-Humaydī told me that when al-Shāfiʿī arrived in Ṣanʿāʾ, a tent was pitched for him and he had ten thousand dinars with him. People came and asked him for help, and the tent was not taken down before he had given away every last coin.” This account was also narrated by al-Aṣamm and a group of others from al-Rabīʿ. (3)