Muḥammad and Yaʿlā, Hushaym ibn Bashīr, ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Sulaymān, Abū Muʿāwiyah, Yazīd ibn al-Miqdām, Marḥūm al-ʿAṭṭār, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayyah, and a great many others in Iraq, the Hijaz, and elsewhere.
He was an ocean among the oceans of knowledge, and his prodigious memory became proverbial.
Those who transmitted from him include the Two Shaykhs, Abū Dāwūd, and Ibn Mājah; al-Nasāʾī reported from his students, and there is nothing from him in the Jāmiʿ of Abū ʿĪsā.
Others who narrated from him were: Muḥammad ibn Saʿd the scribe, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Zurʿah, Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Baqiyy ibn Makhlad, Muḥammad ibn Waḍḍāḥ—the two ḥadith scholars of al-Andalus—al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī, Jaʿfar al-Firyābī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī, Ḥāmid ibn Shuʿayb, Ṣāliḥ Jazara, al-Haytham ibn Khalaf al-Dūrī, ʿUbayd ibn Ghannām, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdūs al-Sarrāj, al-Bāghandī, Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb al-Naysābūrī, ʿAbdān, Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, and many others besides.
Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Ḥimmānī said, “The sons of Ibn Abī Shaybah were scholars; they would crowd us out at every teacher’s gathering.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “Abū Bakr is truthful; he is dearer to me than his brother ʿUthmān.”
Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿIjlī said, “Abū Bakr was reliable, a memoriser of ḥadith.”
ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī al-Fallās said, “I have never seen anyone with a better memory than Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah. He came to us with ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, recited to al-Shaybānī four hundred ḥadiths from memory, and then got up.”