Al-Zaʿfarānī said: “Al-Shāfiʿī came to us in Baghdad in the year 195 AH, stayed with us for a month, and then departed.

He used to dye his hair with henna, and his sideburns were thin.

Aḥmad ibn Sinān said, ‘I saw him with a reddish head and beard—meaning that he had dyed them (1).’

Al-Ṭabarānī said, ‘I heard Abū Yazīd al-Qarāṭīsī say, “I attended the funeral of Ibn Wahb, and I attended the teaching circle of al-Shāfiʿī.”’

Abū Nuʿaym relates in Al-Ḥilyah: ʿUbayd ibn Khalaf al-Bazzār narrated to us; Isḥāq ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated to me; I heard Ḥasan al-Karābīsī say, “I heard al-Shāfiʿī say:

‘I was a man who composed poetry. I would go out to the Bedouin, listen to their verses, and gather them. When I arrived in Mecca I left, reciting lines by Labīd while lashing the legs of my mount with a whip. A man from behind—one of the sanctuary gatekeepers—struck me and said, “A man of Quraysh, a descendant of al-Muṭṭalib, content with his religion and worldly life to be a mere schoolmaster? Of what value is poetry—no matter how well you master it—if you end up a teacher? Pursue fiqh and Allah will raise you (2).”’

Allah caused his words to benefit me. I wrote down whatever Allah enabled me to learn from Ibn ʿUyaynah; then I used to sit with Muslim ibn Khālid; afterwards I came to Mālik. When I had read to him up to the Book of Military Expeditions he said to me, ‘Devote yourself to jurisprudence and you will rise (3), my nephew.’

So I went to Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allah and asked him to speak to some of our relatives so they might give me something, for I was in poverty and need such as only Allah knows. He said to me—"