I said, “Yet we possess a report from Mālik in which he stated: ‘It is uncreated.’”
He replied, “I never heard that.”
I said, “Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways relates it.”

Al-Ḥusayn ibn Fahm said: “Whenever Musʿab was asked about the Qur’an, he would withhold judgment and would fault anyone who did not.”

I say: He was a luminary—an authority on genealogy, a historian, eloquent, and one of the noblest and most outstanding of men.

Among those who transmitted from him were Muslim and Abū Dāwūd, though not in their two canonical collections.

Al-Zubayr said: “My uncle was the foremost man of Quraysh in dignity, knowledge, honor, eloquence, stature, and standing. He was the genealogist of Quraysh and lived eighty years.”

Ibn Abī Khaythamah said: I heard Musʿab say: “I was present while Ḥabīb (1) was reading to Mālik, I on his right and my brother on his left. Each day he would read to him two-and-a-half folios, while the people stayed off to the side. When he finished, the people would come and compare our copies with theirs, and Ḥabīb would charge each person two dinars for every collation.

“I said to Musʿab, ‘They are not collating Ḥabīb’s reading.’ He rejected that, and just then Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn passed by. Musʿab asked him about Ḥabīb, and he said, ‘He would merely glance through a page or two.’ Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn went on his way, and Musʿab fell silent.”

Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad Jazara said: “Muḥammad ibn ʿAbbād narrated to us; Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah narrated to us, from Musʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh …” and he mentioned something.

Abū Dāwūd said: “I heard Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal say: ‘Musʿab is meticulous.’”

I say: His father had been governor of Yemen.