and Maʿbad, as well as Yaḥyā, Ḥafṣah, and Karīmah; all of them were tābiʿīs (Successors), trustworthy and eminent—may Allah be pleased with them.
Al-Bukhārī (1) said, “Muhammad was born two years before the end of ʿUthmān’s caliphate.”
Hishām ibn Ḥassān remarked, “He is the most truthful human being I have ever met.”
Muhammad ibn Saʿd (2) wrote, “He was reliable and trustworthy, a distinguished scholar, an imām in jurisprudence, profuse in knowledge, devout—and he suffered from deafness.”
Muʾarriq al-ʿAjlī said, “I have never seen a man whose fiqh was more suffused with piety, nor whose piety was more guided by fiqh, than he.”
Ibn ʿAwn stated, “Muhammad ibn Sīrīn was the most hopeful of people for this ummah, the harshest in self-reproach, and the most fearful for his own soul (3).”
He also said, “No one in this world wept like three men: Muhammad ibn Sīrīn in Iraq, al-Qāsim ibn Muhammad in the Ḥijāz, and Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah in Syria; they would report ḥadīth exactly word for word.”
Al-Shaʿbī used to say, “You must take from that deaf man”—meaning Muhammad ibn Sīrīn.
Ibn Shawdhub observed, “I have never seen anyone bolder in interpreting dreams than he.”
ʿUthmān al-Battī said, “No one in Basra was more knowledgeable about judicial matters than he.”
They further relate that he died on the ninth of Shawwāl in that same year, one hundred days after al-Ḥasan (4).
(1) Al-Tarikh al-Kabir, vol. 1, p. 91.
(2) Al-Tabaqat, vol. 7, p. 193.
(3) Al-Dhahabi, Siyar A‘lam al-Nubala‘, vol. 4, p. 615.
(4) This marginal addition from manuscript Q reads:
"It would have been preferable for the author to present the biographies of these eminent scholars before those of the poets mentioned earlier—beginning with the former and then proceeding to the latter. Moreover, while he devoted extensive detail to the poets, he condensed the scholars’ entries, omitting many of their instructive maxims, which are often more beneficial than mere praise—especially the sayings of al-Hasan, Ibn Sirin, and Wahb ibn Munabbih. Given the author’s greater competence and scholarship, he should not have overlooked these insights, since readers naturally seek the wisdom of the pious predecessors, whose words hold a special place in the heart. In most biographies he refers to his work Al-Takmil, in which he purportedly compiled the names of transmitters; however, this compendium has not been located by any scholars we consulted, save one who claimed to have seen it. Abu al-Mahasin Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Hasan ibn Hamza al-Husayni al-Dimashqi lists among its titles Kitab al-Takmil fi Ma‘rifat al-Thiqat wa al-Du‘afa wa al-Majahil (combining the material of al-Tahdhib and al-Mizan, in five volumes) in the epilogue to Tadhkirat al-Huffaz (p. 58, under the biography of Ibn Kathir), and Abu al-Tayyib Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Fasi al-Makki likewise mentions it in the epilogue to Al-Taqyid (vol. 1, p. 472)."