Muhammad also said: I heard Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Salām recount, “I was in the company of Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah when I saw a man announce in his gathering, ‘Abū Bakr engaged Abū ʿAbd Allāh in a debate over Sufyān’s ḥadiths, and he recognized every single one of them. Then Muḥammad stepped forward and presented him with two hundred reports that were unfamiliar to him.’
After that Abū Bakr would say, ‘That young man is a bāzil (1)’—and a bāzil is a full-grown camel (2); here, however, he meant someone deeply versed in knowledge and fearless.
I also heard Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Salām say, “The rutūt (3) among the ḥadith scholars—Saʿīd ibn Abī Maryam, Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād, al-Humaydī, Ḥajjāj ibn Minhāl, Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways, al-ʿAdanī (4), al-Ḥasan al-Khallāl (5) of Mecca, Muḥammad ibn Maymūn, the companion of Ibn ʿUyaynah, Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, al-Ashajj, Ibrāhīm ibn al-Munḏir al-Ḥizāmī, and Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā al-Farrāʾ—all stood in awe of Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl and conceded his superiority in expertise and critical scrutiny (6).”
Muhammad further related: Ḥātim ibn Mālik al-Warrāq narrated to me, “I heard the scholars of Mecca declare, ‘Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl is our imam, our jurist, and the jurist of Khurāsān.’”
Muhammad also said: I heard my father—may Allah have mercy on him—say, “When Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl was still a youth he would frequently visit Abū Ḥafṣ Aḥmad ibn Ḥafṣ al-Bukhārī, and I heard Abū …"