during bowing (rukūʿ) and when rising from it; whereas al-Thawrī relied on the ḥadīth of Yazīd ibn Abī Ziyād. Al-Awzāʿī became angry and said, “Do you counter the report of al-Zuhrī with that of Yazīd ibn Abī Ziyād when he is a weak transmitter?!” Al-Thawrī’s face turned red. Al-Awzāʿī then said, “Perhaps you disliked what I have said?” He replied, “Yes.” Al-Awzāʿī said, “Then come with me to the Corner so that we may invoke Allah’s curse upon whichever of us is in error.” Al-Thawrī remained silent.
Heql ibn Ziyād said, “Al-Awzāʿī gave fatwas in seventy thousand cases, all on the basis of ‘He narrated to us’ and ‘He informed us.’”
Abū Zurʿah said, “Sixty thousand legal questions have been transmitted from him.”
Others said, “He began issuing legal verdicts in 113 AH, at the age of twenty-five, and he continued to do so until he died, his mind ever sound.”
Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān narrated from Mālik: “Al-Awzāʿī, al-Thawrī, and Abū Ḥanīfah once gathered in my presence. I asked, ‘Which of them is weightier?’ He answered, ‘Al-Awzāʿī.’”
Muḥammad ibn ʿAjlān said, “I have never seen anyone more sincere toward the Muslims than al-Awzāʿī.”
Another said, “Al-Awzāʿī was never seen laughing loudly. He would exhort the people, and no one in his assembly would remain without weeping with both eye and heart; yet we never saw him weep in public—when alone he would weep until he was shown mercy.”
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said, “The scholars are four: al-Thawrī, Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and al-Awzāʿī.”
Abū Ḥātim said, “He was reliable and adhered strictly to what he had heard.”
They also said, “Al-Awzāʿī never committed a grammatical error in speech. His letters would reach al-Manṣūr, who would examine and ponder them, marveling at their eloquence and sweetness of expression. One day al-Manṣūr said to his most favored secretary—Sulaymān ibn Mujālid—‘We should answer al-Awzāʿī regularly so that we may borrow his style in the correspondence we send to the provinces, to those unfamiliar with his wording.’ Sulaymān replied, ‘By Allah, Commander of the Faithful, no one on earth can match his language, nor even a part of it.’”
Al-Walīd ibn Muslim said, “When al-Awzāʿī had performed the dawn prayer, he would sit remembering Allah, exalted is He, until the sun rose—a practice he traced back to the early generations—then they would rise and discuss language, jurisprudence, and ḥadīth.”
Al-Awzāʿī said, “I saw the Lord of Might in a dream. He asked, ‘Do you enjoin right and forbid wrong?’ I replied, ‘By Your grace, O Lord.’ Then I said, ‘My Lord, let me die upon Islam.’ He said, ‘And upon the sunnah.’”
Muḥammad ibn Sābūr said, “A shaykh in the congregational mosque of Damascus told me, ‘I shall die on such-and-such a day.’ When that day arrived I saw him in the mosque courtyard delousing himself. He said to me, ‘Go to the bier and secure it for me before someone else does.’ I asked, ‘What are you saying?’ He replied, ‘It is just as I tell you. I saw in a dream someone saying, “So-and-so is a Qadarī, and so-and-so …”’