Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad the ḥāfiẓ—known as Jazara—said: “Of all the scholars I met, the most knowledgeable in ḥadith and in diagnosing its hidden defects was ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī; the most skilful at correcting the mis-readings of the shaykhs was Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn; and the one with the sharpest memory when we reviewed our narrations was Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah.”

The ḥāfiẓ Abū al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿUqdah said: “I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khirāsh say, ‘I heard Abū Zurʿah say, “I have never seen anyone whose memory surpasses that of Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah.”’ I asked, ‘Abū Zurʿah, what about our Baghdadi colleagues?’ He replied, ‘Leave your colleagues; they are people of trickery. I have seen no one whose memory is better than Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah.’ ”

Al-Khaṭīb said: “Abū Bakr was precise and possessed an outstanding memory. He compiled the Musnad, the Aḥkām and the Tafsīr, and he taught in Baghdad together with his two brothers, al-Qāsim and ʿUthmān.”

Ibrāhīm Nifṭawayh stated: “In the year 234 AH al-Mutawakkil summoned the jurists and ḥadith scholars. Among those present were Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Zubayrī, Isḥāq ibn Abī Isrāʾīl, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Harawī, and the brothers Abū Bakr and ʿUthmān—the sons of Abī Shaybah—both of whom were ḥuffāẓ. Awards were distributed among them, and al-Mutawakkil ordered them to narrate the reports that rebut the Muʿtazilah and the Jahmiyyah.

“So ʿUthmān sat in Madīnat al-Manṣūr, and about thirty thousand people gathered around him. Abū Bakr sat in the Rusāfah mosque and, being more eminent than his brother, a similar number—around thirty thousand—assembled around him.”

I (the author) say: Abū Bakr’s strength of character was such that he rejected a report that Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn alone had attributed to Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth. He said, “Where did he get this? Here are Ḥafṣ’s notebooks, and this ḥadith is nowhere to be found in them.”

Abū al-Faḍl Aḥmad ibn Hibat Allāh ibn Aḥmad al-Dimashqī informed us—this was read to him on more than one occasion—saying: ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad al-Harawī told us; Zāhir ibn Ṭāhir informed us in the year seven