He transmitted a large number of reports from the Prophet ﷺ, and he also related narrations from al-Ṣiddīq (Abu Bakr), ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, Saʿd, Ibn Masʿūd, Ḥafṣah, ʿĀʾishah, and others.

Related from him were multitudes, among them his sons Ḥamzah, Bilāl, Zayd, Sālim, ʿAbd Allāh, ʿUbayd Allāh, and ʿUmar—if that report is sound (1)—as well as Aslam, the freedman of his father; Anas ibn Sirīn; al-Ḥasan; Saʿīd ibn Jubayr; Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib; Ṭāwūs; ʿUrwah; ʿAṭāʾ; ʿIkrimah; Mujāhid; Ibn Sirīn; al-Zuhrī; and his own freedman Nāfiʿ.

It is authentically established in the Ṣaḥīḥ (2) on the authority of Ḥafṣah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “ʿAbd Allāh is an excellent man—if only he would stand in prayer during the night.” Thereafter he used to stand in prayer at night.

Ibn Masʿūd said, “Among the youth of Quraysh, the one who most restrained himself from the world is Ibn ʿUmar.”

Jābir said, “None of us encountered the world without it inclining him and his inclining toward it—save Ibn ʿUmar. No one acquired anything of the world without that diminishing some of his ranks with Allah, even if the thing itself was esteemed.”

Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib said, “On the day Ibn ʿUmar died, there was no one on earth whose deeds I would rather meet Allah with than his.”

Al-Zuhrī said, “His opinion is beyond comparison, for he remained after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ for sixty years; nothing of the Prophet’s affairs, nor of those of his Companions—may Allah be pleased with her (3)—was hidden from him.”

Mālik said, “Ibn ʿUmar reached eighty-six years of age and issued legal verdicts for sixty of them; delegations from every quarter of the earth would come to him.”

Al-Wāqidī and a group of scholars stated that Ibn ʿUmar died in the year 74 AH, whereas al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār and others held that he died in 73 AH. Al-Zubayr added, “The first view is better attested, and Allah knows best.”

Ibn Saʿd relates (4): When ʿUthmān was killed and ʿAlī became caliph, Ibn ʿUmar came to him. ʿAlī said, “The people love you; depart for Syria, for I have appointed you over it.” Ibn ʿUmar replied, “I adjure you by Allah, by our kinship, by my companionship with the Messenger of Allah, and by the tie of the womb—please appoint someone else and excuse me.” ʿAlī refused, so Ibn ʿUmar sought the help of his sister Ḥafṣah, who pleaded on his behalf; that very night he set out for Mecca, fleeing from him.

It is also said that Marwān said to Ibn ʿUmar, “Why do you not go to Syria so that they may pledge allegiance to you?” He asked, “And what shall I do with the people of Iraq?” Marwān answered, “You would fight them with the people of Syria.” Ibn ʿUmar replied, “By Allah, it would not please me to possess the dominion of the whole earth, with all the people pledging allegiance to me, if even a single man were killed on that account; nor do I desire a situation in which one man says ‘yes’ and another ‘no.’”

It is further reported that al-Ḥajjāj entered upon him while he was ill; Ibn ʿUmar closed his eyes, and when al-Ḥajjāj spoke to him he did not respond. He died in Mecca after the people had returned from the ḥajj, at the end of the year, at the age of eighty-four.