A man once said to Ibn Shubrumah, “May I put a question to you?”
He replied, “If your question is not one that will make the company burst into laughter or demean the person questioned, then ask.”

Wuhaib narrated to us, saying: Iyās ibn Muʿāwiyah remarked, “There are questions which the questioner ought not to raise and the responder ought not to answer. If the question lies outside that category, let him ask; but if it belongs to it, let him refrain.”

The narrator continued: They were overawed by him, and not one of them uttered a word until he rose. The caliph then appointed him to the judgeship of Mecca, and he set out for it (1).

Ahmad ibn Sinān said: al-Misʿarī narrated to us: A man came to Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb and said, “Your mawla (client-freedman) so-and-so has died, leaving an estate worth twenty thousand dirhams.” Sulaymān replied, “So-and-so is nearer to him than I; the money is his, not mine.” At that very time Sulaymān himself was in need of a single dirham (2).

Al-Khaṭīb said: Sulaymān assumed the judgeship of Mecca in the year 214 AH and was dismissed in 219 AH (3).

Ibn ʿAllān and a number of others informed us—they had heard Abū al-Yaman al-Kindī—who reported through al-Qazzāz, from al-Khaṭīb, from al-Burqānī, from al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Tamīmī, from Abū ʿAwānah al-Isfarāyinī, from Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Muqaddamī, who said:
“I heard ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī in 220 AH. When Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb was mentioned to him, he praised him profusely and said: ‘Yahya ibn Saʿīd narrated to us; he said: Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb narrated to me from Ḥammād ibn Zayd, who said: I fear nothing for Ayyūb and Ibn ʿAwn except the hadith.’” (4)