And—with this same chain of transmission—Ahmad informed us; ‘Abd al-Razzaq informed us; from Sufyan, from Abu Ishaq, from al-Aswad, from ‘A’ishah, who said: “The Prophet ﷺ would sleep while in a state of major ritual impurity, without touching water.” (1)

Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Tayyan said, “I heard Abu Mas‘ud say: ‘I have written from one thousand seven hundred shaykhs. Of these I inserted three hundred and ten into my compilations and left the rest aside. I recorded one million five hundred thousand hadith reports, from which I selected five hundred thousand dealing with Qur’anic exegesis, legal rulings, benefits, and other matters.’” (2)

Humayd ibn al-Rabi‘ said: “When Abu Mas‘ud al-Isfahani arrived in Egypt, he lay on his back and said to us, ‘Take the hadith of the people of Egypt.’

“He then began to recite to us, shaykh after shaykh, before ever meeting them—that is, he had already studied the hadith of the Egyptian scholars from the notebooks of travelling transmitters and had memorised it.” (3)

And from Abu Mas‘ud who said: “We used to review the chapters together. They broached one chapter and produced five hadiths for it; I supplied a sixth, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal prodded me in the chest, pleased with me.” (4)

Yazid ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Isfahani narrated from Ahmad ibn Dallowayh, who said: