Ibn Khallikān also reports that Abū ʿUbayd held the judgeship of Ṭarsūs for eighteen years and relates many accounts of his devotion and strenuous worship. (1)

He learned Arabic from Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī, al-Aṣmaʿī, Abū ʿUbayda [Maʿmar ibn al-Muthannā] (2), Ibn al-Aʿrābī, al-Farrāʾ, al-Kisāʾī, and others. (3)

Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh said, “We are in need of him, whereas he has no need of us.” (4)

He traveled to Baghdad, where people listened to him reciting from his own compositions. (5)

Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī remarked, “He was like a mountain into which life had been breathed, excelling at everything.” (6)

Aḥmad ibn Kāmil al-Qāḍī said, “Abū ʿUbayd was virtuous, pious, and godly. He was proficient in the various Islamic sciences—Qurʾān, jurisprudence, Arabic, and historical reports. His narrations were fine, his transmissions reliable; I know of no one who ever faulted his knowledge or his writings.” (7)

Among his works are Kitāb al-Amwāl (“Public Revenues”), Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān wa-Maʿānihi (“The Merits and Meanings of the Qurʾān”), and other useful books. May Allah have mercy on him. (8)

Al-Bukhārī stated that he died in this very year. (9) Others said it was the year before, in Mecca; still others said in Medina, at the age of sixty-seven. (10) May Allah have mercy on him. Some held that he had passed seventy—Allah knows best.

Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān Abū al-Jamāhir al-Dimashqī al-Kafrasūsī (11) was one of the ḥadith masters. (12)