He retorted, “What is this, Abū ʿAlī?”
I answered, “I was only testing you.”
Khalaf al-Khayyām said: I heard Ṣāliḥ remark, “For four years I kept attending the lessons of ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd. He would read nothing but three ḥadiths each day—or so he claimed.”
In another version: “He would narrate three ḥadiths to every individual, all of them from Shuʿbah.”
From Jaʿfar al-Ṭistī: he heard Abū Muslim al-Kajjī—when Ṣāliḥ Jazara was mentioned in his presence—exclaim, “How lightly you regard him! Why do you not say, ‘the leader of the Muslims’?”
Ibn Abī Ḥātim said: I heard my father say to Abū Zurʿah, “May Allah preserve our brother Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad; he never fails to make us laugh, whether present or absent. He wrote to inform me that Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī had died, and that a shaykh known as Muḥammad ibn Yazīd Maḥmash had taken the teaching chair. The shaykh then narrated that the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘O Abū ʿUmayr, what has the camel done?’ (1) and that the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘The angels do not accompany a company in which there is any dumb animal.’ (2)
So may Allah grant you the best consolation for the one who has passed away and the greatest reward for the one who remains.”