He narrated from Anas ibn Mālik and from a number of the Successors, among them Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Abū l-ʿĀliyah, Zurārah ibn Awfā, ʿAṭāʾ, Mujāhid, Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn, Masrūq, Abū Mijlaz, and others besides.
A host of leading scholars transmitted from him, such as Ayyūb, Ḥammād ibn Salamah, Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl, Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, al-Aʿmash, Shuʿbah, al-Awzāʿī, Misʿar, Maʿmar, and Hammām.
Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib said, “No Iraqi who came to me was better than he.”
Bakr al-Muzanī said, “I have never seen anyone with a sharper memory than he.”
Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn said, “He is among the people with the strongest memories.”
Matar al-Warrāq said, “Whenever Qatādah heard a ḥadith, he would be seized by al-ʿawīl wa-al-zawīl (1)—an intense, almost trembling earnestness—until he had memorised it.”
Al-Zuhrī said, “He has more knowledge than Makḥūl.”
Maʿmar said, “I never saw anyone more learned in jurisprudence than al-Zuhrī, Ḥammād, and Qatādah.”
Qatādah himself said, “I never heard anything without my heart retaining it.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal remarked, “He was the most retentive scholar of Baṣrah; he would not hear anything without committing it to memory. The Compendium of Jābir was read to him once, and he memorised it. On another occasion he was mentioned in my presence, and I extolled his knowledge, his jurisprudence, and his mastery of the points of disagreement, Qurʾān commentary, and much else besides.”
Abū Ḥātim (2) stated, “He passed away in Wāsiṭ during the plague”—that is, in this very year—“at the age of fifty-six or fifty-seven.” (3)
In the same year there also died: Abū l-Ḥubāb Saʿīd ibn Yasār, and al-Aʿraj.
(1) In Gharīb al-Hadīth by al-Khaṭṭābī (vol. 3, p. 154), from Muṭṭar al-Warrāq: az-Zawīl refers to al-zamāʼ (restlessness) and al-qalaq (anxiety), i.e. not remaining settled in one place. The term derives from zaala (to depart): when something leaves its location, it is said to undergo zawlan and zawaylan. In Lisān al-ʿArab under the entry zul (departure) it is noted, in a hadith of Qatāda, “akhadhahu al-awīl wa-z-zawīl,” meaning anxiety and unease preventing one from staying put; here both al-awīl and az-zawīl carry the sense of al-zawāl (departure).
(2) Al-Jarḥ wa-al-Taʿdīl (vol. 7, p. 133).
(3) This is also an inserted addition, namely: Qatāda said: “Whoever places his trust in Allah” (in the manuscript; in al-Ḥilya [2: 340] and Ṣifat al-Ṣafwa [3: 259] it reads “man yattaqi Allah,” “whoever fears Allah”), “Allah is with him. And whoever Allah is with, the party that cannot be defeated, the guardian who never sleeps, the guide who never errs, and the scholar who never forgets are with him.”
He also said: “In Paradise there are vents (kuwa) opening onto the Fire; the inhabitants of Paradise peer through them at the Fire and ask, ‘Why have the wretched entered the Fire while we have entered Paradise by virtue of your discipline?’ They reply, ‘We used to command you but you would not obey, and we forbade you but you would not refrain.’” (Reported by Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya [2: 340] and by Ibn al-Jawzī in Ṣifat al-Ṣafwa [3: 259]; the bracketed portion appears in both.)
He added: “There is a branch of knowledge that, if a man preserves it seeking thereby the welfare of his soul, his religion, and people, is better than a full year of worship.” (Reported by Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya [2: 341].)
And Qatāda said: “If mere knowledge were sufficient by virtue of something, Moses (peace be upon him) would have been content with what he had; yet he sought increase.”