He was born in 277 AH.
While still a perceptive boy he copied hadiths in his own hand, and he began the formal pursuit of knowledge in 289 AH and thereafter.
He narrated from: Ibrāhīm ibn Zuhayr al-Ḥulwānī; Ḥamzah ibn Muḥammad al-Kātib; Yūsuf ibn Yaʿqūb al-Qāḍī, author of al-Sunan; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Masrūq; Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Marwazī; al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAllawayh al-Qaṭṭān; Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Firyābī; Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh Muṭayyin; Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah; Ibrāhīm ibn Sharīk; Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Layth al-Baṣrī; Muḥammad ibn Ḥayyān ibn Azhar; Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Suwayd; ʿImrān ibn Mūsā al-Sakhtiyānī; Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Samāʿah; al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥubāb al-Jumaḥī; Buhlul ibn Isḥāq, the preacher of Anbār; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nājiyah; al-Ḥasan ibn Sufyān; Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī; Ibn Khuzaymah; al-Sarrāj; al-Baghawī—and others of their rank in Khurāsān, the Hijaz, Iraq, and the Jibāl region.
He authored works that bear witness to his leadership in jurisprudence and hadith: the Musnad of ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) in two volumes; a Mustakhraj on the Ṣaḥīḥ in four volumes; and other writings, including his Muʿjam, a slim volume containing reports from roughly three hundred shaykhs.
Among those who transmitted from him were: al-Ḥākim; Abū Bakr al-Barqānī; Ḥamzah al-Sahmī; Abū Ḥāzim al-ʿAbdawī; al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Bāshānī; Abū Saʿīd al-Naqqāsh; Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Ṭabarī; the ḥadith master Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Jarjaraʾī; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn Munīr al-ʿAdl; Abū ʿAmr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-Fārisī—his grandson—and many others.