Imām Abū ʿUbayd said, “Hadith expertise came to rest with four men: Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah—he is the most fluent of them in narrating it; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—their most insightful in its jurisprudence; Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn—the most comprehensive collector of it; and ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī—the one who knows it best.”
Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn al-ʿAlāʾ al-Jurjānī related: “I was with Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah in the Kindah cemetery and asked him, ‘Abū Bakr, how old were you when you heard from Sharīk?’ He replied, ‘I was fourteen years old, and even then my memorization of hadith was stronger than it is today.’ I said, ‘By Allah, he speaks the truth. How can the memory of a youth compare with that of a man in his eighties?’
“Afterwards I asked Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn about Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah’s hearing from Sharīk. He said, ‘In our estimation Abū Bakr is trustworthy (ṣadūq). Why would he claim, “I found this in my father’s notebook, written in his own hand,” or say, “Rūḥ ibn ʿUbādah related to me the ḥadith of the Dajjāl,” when we had assumed he heard it from Abū Hishām al-Rifāʿī?’”
ʿAbdān al-Ahwāzī said, “Abū Bakr would sit by the Pillar along with his brother, Mushkadanah (1), ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Barrād, and others; they were all silent except Abū (2) Bakr, for he would speak at length.”
Ibn ʿAdī remarked, “That is the Pillar beside which Ibn ʿUqdah used to sit.” Ibn ʿUqdah told me, “This is the Pillar of ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd. After him ʿAlqamah sat here, then Ibrāhīm, then Manṣūr, then Sufyān al-Thawrī, then Wakīʿ, then Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, and after him al-Mutayyin.”