Ibn ʿAsakir narrated (1) from him that he said: “During my travels I would write at night by the light of a lamp. One night something struck my eyes so that I could no longer see the lamp. I began to weep over the loss of my sight, lamenting the ḥadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ that I would now miss recording, and my state of estrangement. Drowsiness then overcame me and I fell asleep; I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in a dream.
He said, ‘What ails you? (2)’ I told him of my loneliness and of what I had missed from writing the Sunnah. He said, ‘Come closer to me.’ I drew near, and he placed his hand upon my eyes and it was as though he were reciting verses from the Quran. When I awoke I could see again, so I sat and resumed copying.”

Abū Zurʿah al-Dimashqī and al-Ḥākim Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Naysābūrī praised him, saying: “He is the imām of the people of ḥadith in Fārs. He came to Naysābūr and our teachers heard from him.” Some nevertheless attributed to him a tendency toward Shiʿism.

Ibn ʿAsakir also reported (3) that Yaʿqūb b. al-Layth, ruler of Fārs, was told that he spoke against ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, so he ordered that he be brought before him. His vizier said, “O Emir, he is not speaking against our shaykh ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān al-Sijzī; rather, he is speaking against ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān the Companion.” The Emir replied, “Leave him. What have I to do with the Companion? (4) I thought he was attacking our shaykh [ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān al-Sijzī].” (5)

I (the author) say: I do not think this is soundly reported from Yaʿqūb b. Sufyān, for he was an imām, a ḥadith scholar of great stature. He died one month before Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, in Rajab of this year, in Basra—may Allah have mercy on him.

Someone saw him in a dream and said to him, “How did your Lord deal with you?” He replied, “He forgave me and commanded me to dictate ḥadith in heaven just as I used to dictate on earth. So I sat to dictate in the fourth heaven, surrounded by a group of angels—among them Jibrīl—writing what I dictated of ḥadith with pens of gold.”

As for ʿArīb al-Maʾmūnīyah (6), al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn ʿAsakir included her in his Tārīkh and related the view of some that she was the daughter of Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā b. Khālid al-Barmakī, who was kidnapped when she was young after the downfall of the Barmakids and was sold,