and Ibn Numayr, in Kufah, spent a whole night with him. I was there with the two of them; they went on choosing reports from him, and I was choosing along with them, right up to day-break (1).
Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ziyād al-Karamīnī said: Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd told me, “Whatever you see in my notebook marked in red is the sign of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and whatever you see marked in green is the sign of Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn.”
Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd ibn Farwah said: I heard Qutaybah say, “I travelled down to Iraq for the first time in the year seventy-two, and at that time I was twenty-three years old.”
ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn Shabbūyah said: I heard Qutaybah say, “In my youth I was devoted to speculative opinion (raʾy). Then I saw in a dream that a water-skin was lowered from the sky. I watched people try to seize it but they could not reach it. I came forward, grasped it, and when I looked inside I beheld everything between East and West. When morning came I went to Mikhḍaʿ the cloth-merchant—an expert in interpreting dreams—and told him what I had seen. He said, ‘My son, adhere to the transmitted reports (athar); opinion will never reach East and West, only the report does.’ So I abandoned raʾy and devoted myself to the athar.”
Aḥmad ibn Jarīr (2) al-Lāl narrated from Qutaybah that my father said to me, “I saw the Prophet ﷺ in a dream with a scroll in his hand. I asked, ‘Messenger of Allah, what is this scroll?’ He replied, ‘It contains the names of the scholars.’ I said, ‘Hand it to me so that I may look for my nam…’