Selected statements of praise for him, may Allah have mercy on him:

Al-Bukhari, may Allah have mercy on him, enjoyed profound respect from his teachers and his peers. They spoke of him as he deserved and granted him the rank befitting him, and the same was done by others—whether contemporaries or those who came later. His merits were collected by the two great hadith masters al-Dhahabi and Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani in separate monographs, as al-Dhahabi noted in Tadhkirat al-Huffaz and Ibn Hajar in Tahdhib al-Tahdhib. It is fitting here to cite a few examples:

• Abu ʿIsa al-Tirmidhi said: “Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil was with ʿAbd Allah ibn Munir. When he rose to leave, Ibn Munir said to him, ‘O Abu ʿAbd Allah, may Allah make you the adornment of this ummah.’ Allah answered that supplication for him.”

• Imam al-Bukhari himself relates: “Whenever I entered upon Sulayman ibn Harb, he would say, ‘Clarify for us the mistakes of Shuʿbah.’”

• Muhammad ibn Abi Hatim, al-Bukhari’s scribe, said: “I heard Yahya ibn Jaʿfar al-Baykandi say, ‘If I were able to add some of my life to the life of Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil, I would do so, for my death would be the death of a single man, whereas the death of Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil would mean the disappearance of knowledge.’”

• Ahmad ibn Hanbal declared: “Khurasan has never produced anyone like Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil.”

• When ʿAli ibn al-Madini was informed that al-Bukhari had said, “I have never felt small before anyone except ʿAli ibn al-Madini,” he replied to the one who told him, “Leave his remark…"