Ibn Mahdī said: “I heard Mālik relate that al-Zuhrī once narrated a ḥadith. When he rose to depart, I took hold of the bridle of his mount and asked him to clarify it. He replied, ‘You want me to ask for clarification?! I have never, in my life, asked a scholar to explain anything, nor have I ever contradicted a scholar.’” Ibn Mahdī would then remark, “Those are the lengthy traditions, and those are the accounts of the campaigns.” (1)

Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān transmitted from Hishām ibn Khālid al-Salamī, from al-Walīd ibn Muslim, from Saʿīd—meaning Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—that Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik asked al-Zuhrī to write for his sons something of his ḥadith. Al-Zuhrī therefore dictated four hundred reports to a scribe, after which he went out to the scholars of ḥadith and recounted those same narrations to them. Later Hishām said to al-Zuhrī, “That volume has been lost.” Al-Zuhrī replied, “Do not worry,” and dictated the very same four hundred reports once again. Hishām then produced the first notebook, and not a single letter was missing; he had only wished to test al-Zuhrī’s memory. (2)

ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said, “I have never seen anyone who could guide the flow of a ḥadith in narration more beautifully than al-Zuhrī.”

Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah reported from ʿAmr ibn Dīnār: “I have never met anyone more precise in ḥadith than al-Zuhrī, nor anyone to whom the dinar and dirham were of less consequence; to him, coins were no different from dung.” ʿAmr added, “I sat with Jābir, Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar and Ibn al-Zubayr, yet I never saw anyone who conveyed a ḥadith more skilfully than al-Zuhrī.”

Imām Aḥmad declared, “The best of people in ḥadith and the soundest of them in isnād is al-Zuhrī.”

Al-Nasāʾī said, “The finest of chains is: al-Zuhrī, from ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn, from his father, from his grandfather ʿAlī, from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him.”

Saʿīd narrated from al-Zuhrī: “For forty-five years I travelled back and forth between the Ḥijāz and Syria, yet I never heard a ḥadith that struck me as novel.”

Al-Layth said, “I have never seen a scholar more comprehensive than Ibn Shihāb. If you heard him speak on exhortation and warning, you would think he knew nothing else; if he spoke about the prophets and the People of the Book, you would think that was his sole field; if he discoursed on Bedouin lore and genealogy, you would deem him a master only of that; and when he expounded the Qur’an and the sunnah, his discourse was an unprecedented, all-embracing marvel.” He would supplicate: “O Allah, I ask You for every good encompassed by Your knowledge, and I seek refuge in You from every evil encompassed by Your knowledge, in this world and the Hereafter.”

Al-Layth also said, “Al-Zuhrī was the most generous man I ever saw; he gave to everyone who came and asked, until nothing remained with him…”