Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAdī said: “At the outset he was charged with a measure of nasb (1) – hostility toward ʿAlī – so Ibn al-Furāt expelled him from Baghdad to Wāsiṭ. Ibn ʿĪsā then brought him back; he resumed teaching, openly relating the merits of ʿAlī, and later (2) adopted the Ḥanbalī school, becoming a leading shaykh among them (3).

I say: He was courageous and strong-willed. A dispute broke out between him and Ibn Jarīr, between him and Ibn Ṣāʿid, and between him and the vizier Ibn ʿĪsā who had previously favored him.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qaṭṭān said: “I was with Ibn Jarīr when someone announced, ‘Ibn Abī Dāwūd is reciting to the people the virtues of Imām ʿAlī.’ Ibn Jarīr replied, ‘That is nothing more than a watchman’s cry of Allāhu akbar.’”

I say: This statement cannot be accepted from Ibn Jarīr, given the enmity that existed between the two shaykhs.

Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb said: “I heard the ḥāfiẓ Abū Muḥammad al-Khallāl say, ‘Abū Bakr had a better memory than his father, Abū Dāwūd.’ (4)”

The exegete Imām Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh—though he is unreliable—related that he heard Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāwūd say, “My tafsīr contains one hundred and twenty thousand hadiths.”

Ṣāliḥ ibn Aḥmad al-Hamadhānī, the ḥāfiẓ, said: “Ibn Abī Dāwūd was the imām of Iraq; the sultan erected a pulpit for him. In his day there were shaykhs in Baghdad with earlier chains of transmission than his, yet they did not attain the proficiency and exactitude that he reached (5).”