I saw Abū Bakr more than once, right after the adhān, pouring out supplication and weeping; at times he would strike his head against the wall, so that one day I feared it might bleed. Among the circle of our teachers I never witnessed anyone whose prayer was finer than his, and he would allow no one to backbite in his gathering (1).

I also heard him on several occasions: whenever he recited a line of poetry he would deliberately spoil and alter it until the meter was lost—yet his intellect and judgment were themselves a byword (2).

He was asked about someone who catches the rukūʿ but has not recited Sūrah al-Fātiḥah; he answered, “He must repeat that rakʿah.” (3)

Al-Ḥākim then said: Abū Bakr ibn Isḥāq narrated to us; Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb al-Qazwīnī narrated to us; Saʿīd ibn Yaḥyā al-Aṣbahānī narrated to us; Suʿayr ibn al-Khims narrated to us, from Abū Isḥāq, from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, from ʿAbd Allāh, who said:

“Whoever wishes to meet Allah tomorrow as a Muslim should carefully maintain these five prayers wherever the call to them is made.”

Al-Ḥākim remarked: al-Dāraquṭnī copied this from me and said, “I have never written it from anyone else.”

Al-Khalīlī likewise transmitted it from al-Ḥākim, and added: “Ibn Manda narrated it from al-Ṣibghī.”

Ibn Manda said, “Abū Shaykh the ḥāfiẓ copied it from me.”

A number of scholars related it from al-Hajarī.

Nothing is reported from Suʿayr except through this chain—from Abū Isḥāq, who is Ibrāhīm al-Hajarī (4), not al-Sabīʿī—and al-Khalīlī went to great lengths in extolling it.