ibn Dāwūd al-Makkī; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Khuzāʿī al-Iṣfahānī; al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl al-Mujawwaz; and a great many others, the last of them being Abū Khalīfah al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥubāb.
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “Abū al-Walid is accurate.”⦗1⦘
He also remarked, “He is three years older than Ibn Mahdī. Today Abū al-Walid is the Shaykh al-Islām; I would not place any of the hadith scholars above him today.”⦗2⦘
Muḥammad ibn Muslim ibn Wārah, the ḥāfiẓ, related: “I asked Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ‘Whom do you prefer for narrations from Shuʿbah—Abū al-Walid or Abū al-Naḍr?’ He replied, ‘If Abū al-Walid used to write in Shuʿbah’s presence, then Abū al-Walid.’
“I then said: ‘I heard Abū al-Walid say: While I was writing before Shuʿbah, he caught sight of me and said, “And you write?” So I put the tablets down and simply kept looking at him.’⦗3⦘
“I commented: It seemed he disliked writing because he was able to memorize.”
Ibn Wārah also said: ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī told me, “Write down the principal narrations from Abū al-Walid, for the non-essential ones you can obtain elsewhere.”
Abū Nuʿaym said to me, “Were it not for Abū al-Walid, I would not have advised you to come to Basra; for if you enter it you will find no one there but a heedless man—except Abū al-Walid.”⦗4⦘
I say: May Allah pardon Abū Nuʿaym, for at that time Basra contained scholars such as ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī, and a group of other leading hadith authorities.