—he said, “I seek Allah’s forgiveness; the very mention of the isnad (chain of transmission) breeds conceit in the heart.

Abu Bakr al-Marwazi said: I heard Bishr say, “Hunger purifies the heart, puts passion to death, and yields subtle knowledge.”

Abu Bakr ibn ʿUthman said: I heard Bishr ibn al-Harith say, “For forty years I have craved roast meat, yet not once have I had a single dirham that was unquestionably pure.” (1)

Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Farraʾ said: ʿAli ibn ʿAtham narrated to us: “Bishr ibn al-Harith stayed in ʿAbadan, drinking seawater and refusing to drink from the sultan’s cisterns until it harmed his stomach. He returned to his sister in pain. He used to make spindles and sell them, and that was his livelihood.”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Musa ibn Harun said: Muhammad ibn Nuʿaym narrated to us: “I saw them come to Bishr, and he said, ‘People of hadith! Do you realize that zakah is due on it, just as the one who owns two hundred dirhams must give five?’” (2)

I say: This is rhetorical hyperbole; otherwise, if the hadiths concern obligatory duties they are binding, and if they relate to meritorious acts they are meritorious—but acting upon them becomes especially incumbent on the hadith scholar.

Abu Nashit said: “Bishr forbade me from hadith and its people.”

He also said: “I went to Yahya al-Qattan, and I was informed that he said, ‘I love this young man because of his pursuit of hadith.’”