ʿUbayd Allah ibn Wāṣil said: I heard Muḥammad ibn Salām remark, “I have written down narrations from four hundred teachers.”
ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn related: I heard Muḥammad ibn Salām say, “I reached Mālik and found the people reading aloud to him, so I did not hear anything directly from him.”
Sahl ibn al-Mutawakkil said: I heard Muḥammad declare, “I spent forty thousand in seeking knowledge and another forty thousand in spreading it; would that what I spent on acquiring it had been spent on disseminating it—or words to that effect (1).”
ʿUbayd Allah ibn Shurayḥ reported: I heard Muḥammad ibn Salām say, “I have memorized roughly five thousand hadiths (2).”
Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ghunjar stated: “Ibn Salām authored works in every branch of learning, and there was affection and brotherhood between him and Abū Ḥafṣ Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ the jurist, despite their difference in legal school (3).”
Yaḥyā ibn Jaʿfar al-Bīkandī said, “Muḥammad ibn Salām was born on the very night Sufyān al-Thawrī died.”
Al-Bukhārī noted, “He passed away on the seventh of Ṣafar in the year 225 AH (4).”