His father (1) was counted among the eminent itinerant traditionists who settled in Damascus; he wrote copiously and transmitted reports from Muḥammad ibn Ayyūb ibn al-Ḍurays al-Bajali, Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Qattāt, and their peers. He also had his son Tamām attend their sessions in Damascus and personally oversaw his training.

He was born in Damascus in 330 AH.

Tamām heard ḥadīth from: his own father; Khaythama ibn Sulaymān; al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥabīb al-Ḥaṣāʾirī (2); Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd al-Ḥawrānī; Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥadhlam (3); Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Faḍāla; Abū al-Maymūn ibn Rāshid; Abū Yaʿqūb al-Adh-raʿī; ʿAlī ibn Abī al-ʿAqab; Abū ʿAlī ibn Hārūn; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Faḍāla al-Ḥimṣī—the companion of Baḥr ibn Naṣr; ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Walīd al-Murrī, who conveyed to him from Akhta l ibn al-Ḥakam; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Safar (4) al-Jurašī (5), transmitting from Bakkār ibn Qutayba; Muḥammad ibn Himyan al-Qaysī, who narrated to him from Ibn ʿArafa; Hishām ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAdabbas; Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Sinān, through Ibn Bint Maṭar; and many others besides.

In the Qur’anic reading of Abū ʿAmr he recited to Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān Ghulām (6) al-Sabbāk, a disciple of al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥabbāb, and to al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ṣawwāf, on the authority of what both of them had recited to Abū ʿUmar al-Dūrī.