I asked al-Daraqutni about him, and he replied, “An ascetic, a mountain (of learning), trustworthy; he narrates nothing but sound hadith.”
Jaʿfar al-Nahrawani said: “I heard Bishr ibn al-Harith say, ‘ʿAwj ibn ʿUnuq would stride into the sea and gather teak; he was the first to point people to teak. He would take a fish from the water and roast it in the very eye of the sun.’ (1)”
Ibrahim al-Harbi remarked: “If Bishr’s intellect were apportioned among all the people of Baghdad, they would each become intelligent.” (2)
I add: Abu ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Nasaʾi narrated from Bishr in the Musnad of ʿAli.
It is related that a man once came to Bishr, kissed him, and kept repeating, “My master, Abū Naṣr!” When the visitor departed, Bishr said to his companions, “Here is someone who loved another for a goodness he merely imagined. Perhaps the lover is saved, while the beloved has no idea what his own state is.” (3)
Bishr the Barefoot—may Allah have mercy on him—died on a Friday, in the month of Rabiʿ al-Awwal,
(1) Ibn al-Qayyim states in al-Manar al-Munif, pp. 76–77: One way to recognize a fabricated hadith is when sound evidence conclusively refutes it—such as the report about ‘Awj ibn ‘Anuq, invented to discredit the prophetic narratives. According to that report, ‘Awj’s height was 3,333⅓ cubits; when Noah warned him of the Flood he retorted, “Carry me in that little bowl of yours!”; the waters allegedly never reached higher than his ankle; he waded through the sea until it came up to his waist; he could pick a fish from the ocean floor and roast it in the sun; and he once uprooted a rock large enough to crush Moses’ entire army, but God pierced it so that it hung around his neck like a collar. The real surprise is not the forger’s brazen lie against God, but that some scholars copied this tale into works of tafsir and other disciplines without exposing its falsehood.
Al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir likewise remarks that the story of ‘Awj ibn ‘Anuq and everything narrated about him is sheer nonsense with no reliable basis; it was fabricated by heretical scripturalists, and ‘Awj did not live in Noah’s era—for none of the unbelievers survived the Flood. See al-Bidaya, 1:114.
(2) Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, vol. 7, p. 73.
(3) Abu Nu‘aym, Tabaqat al-Awliya, p. 113.