Companions.
He attended the Pledge of al-ʿAqabah and the Battle of Badr, and he is the one to whom the adhan (1) was shown—a vision that took place in the first year after the Hijrah.
He relates only a handful of hadiths, and his narrations appear in the Four Sunan.
It has been said that inserting “Thaʿlabah” into his lineage is a mistake.
Those who transmitted from him include Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Laylā—though he never actually met him—and his son Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh.
He passed away in the year 32 AH.
Isḥāq al-Farawī reported: ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar al-ʿUmarī related to us, from Bishr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Zayd, who said:
“I came to ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and said, ‘O Commander of the Believers! I am the son of the Companion of al-ʿAqabah and Badr, the son of the one who was shown the call to prayer.’”
ʿUmar replied, “People of Syria:
These are true marks of honor, not two wooden bowls of milk—
diluted with water, only to turn in the end into waste!” (2)
(1) Reported by Abu Dawud, no. 499; Ahmad, 4/43; Ibn Majah, no. 708; and al-Bayhaqi, 1/390-391, through the isnad of Ibn Ishaq: “Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. al-Harith al-Taymi related to me, from Muhammad b. Abd Allah b. Zayd b. Abd Rabbih, from his father.” The chain is strong. Ibn Hibban (no. 287) declared it authentic, as did al-Bukhari according to what al-Tirmidhi cites from him in Al-Illal. In this wording the phrases of the iqama are recited once each, whereas the author will soon quote another sound chain in which the iqama is doubled like the adhan.
(2) The couplet is from a qasida by Abu Salt Waldaʾ (called al-Daʾamiya), composed in praise of Sayf b. Dhi Yazan. It opens with:
li-yaṭluba al-watr(a) am thāl(u) ibn Dhi Yazan * rīm(un) fī al-baḥri li-l-aʿdāʾi aḥwālā
("Is the pursuit of vengeance the concern of the nephew of Dhi Yazan—an oryx at sea, frightening the enemies with changing states?")
Ibn Ishaq cites it, as reported by Ibn Hisham, 1/66; see also Muʿjam al-Buldan, sub “Ghumdan,” al-Tabari, 2/147-148, and Ibn Qutayba, Shiʿr wa-l-Shuʿarāʾ, p. 282.
In Al-Aghani, 5/15, the same lines are attributed to the poet al-Nabigha al-Jaʿdi in a poem that begins:
imma tarī ẓilal(a) al-ayyām(i) qad ḥasar(at) * ʿannī wa-shammarat dhayl(an) kāna dhiyālā
("If you see the shadows of days have now withdrawn from me, pulling up a train that once trailed long…")
Ibn Hisham, the author of the Sira, prefers the attribution to al-Nabigha. – Al-qaʿb means “a large drinking cup,” and shayban signifies “a mixture.”