Al-Bukhārī and Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥākim (1) both state that he was present at the Battle of Badr.
He is credited with several hadiths and also narrated from Abū Bakr and ʿUmar.
He witnessed the Conquest (of Mecca) and later took up residence there.
Those who transmitted from him include: ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ʿUrwah ibn al-Zubayr, ʿUbaydullāh ibn ʿUtbah, Busr ibn Saʿīd, and Abū Murrah, the client of ʿAqīl.
In the biographical rolls he is counted among the people of Madinah, and—according to one report—he lived to seventy-five.
The more likely figure, however, is that he reached roughly eighty years of age if he had indeed witnessed Badr—Allah knows best.
Yūnus ibn Bukayr related—from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq—who said, “My father told me, from a man of the Māzin tribe, from Abū Wāqid, who said:
‘I was pursuing a man from the idolaters on the Day of Badr when his head fell before my sword reached him, so I knew someone other than I had killed him.’ (2)
Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd narrated—from Ibn Shihāb—from Sinān (3) ibn Abī Sinān al-Duʾalī—that Abū Wāqid al-Laythī embraced Islam on the day of the Conquest.
I [the author] say: On that basis there would be two Companions known by the kunya Abū Wāqid.