Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī said, “Among the shaykhs I have met I never saw anyone with a better memory than ʿAbdān, and among our own colleagues I never found anyone more retentive than Abū Bakr ibn al-Jiʿābī. At first I assumed he was like some of the Baghdadis who memorise only a single shaykh, or one biographical entry, or one chapter. Then Abū Isḥāq ibn Ḥamzah said to me one day, ‘Abū ʿAlī, do not be mistaken; Ibn al-Jiʿābī has memorised a vast amount of ḥadīth.’

He continued: “One day we had just left Ibn Ṣāʿid’s gathering when I asked, ‘Abū Bakr, what chains does Sufyān report from Manṣūr?’ He began to recite the relevant entry, and I kept steering him from the ḥadīths of Egypt to those of Syria, then Iraq, then the unique narrations of the Khurasānīs, and he kept answering. Finally I said, ‘And what has al-Aʿmash narrated from Abū Ṣāliḥ, from Abū Hurayrah and Abū Saʿīd jointly?’ He cited a dozen or so reports, and the breadth of his recall left me astonished (1).”

Ibn al-Faḍl al-Qaṭṭān said, “I heard Ibn al-Jiʿābī say: ‘I entered al-Raqqah with two large trunks (2) of books. My servant came to me in distress, for the books had been lost. I said, “My son, do not grieve; those trunks held two hundred thousand ḥadīths, and not a single one of them—neither its chain of transmission nor its wording—poses any difficulty for me (3).”’”

Abū ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī said, “We never witnessed anyone with a stronger memory than Abū Bakr ibn al-Jiʿābī. I heard someone remark that he knew two hundred thousand ḥadīths by heart and could respond concerning the same number besides. What set him apart from other ḥuffāẓ was that he would recite the texts verbatim, whereas most memorisers allow themselves some latitude in wording. He was an imam in detecting hidden defects, in evaluating narrators, in knowing their biographies and the criticisms levelled against each of them. In his time no one surpassed him (4).”

Musallam ibn Muḥammad informed me, saying: “Abū al-Yaman al-Kindī informed us, saying…”