Ibn Saʿd states in al-Ṭabaqāt: His full name is ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Dhī Yuḥmid ibn al-Sabīʿ.
He then remarks: Most of those who mention him do not trace his lineage beyond his father.
Sufyān narrates from Abū Isḥāq: “I saw ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—with hair and beard completely white.”
Shurayk said: I heard him say, “I was born two years after ʿUthmān assumed leadership.”
Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh reported: Abū Isḥāq told us, “During the governorship of Ziyād—meaning Ziyād ibn Abīh—I took part in six, or perhaps seven, military expeditions.
He passed away before Muʿāwiyah, and I have never seen anyone better than Ziyād.”
A man said to him, “Not even ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz?”
He replied, “The era of Ziyād was nothing but a wedding feast!”
This was transmitted by Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī from Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Kūfī, from Abū Bakr.
Several of our teachers who heard Ibn Ṭabarzad informed us that ʿAbd al-Wahhāb the ḥāfiẓ told him, saying: Abū Muḥammad ibn Hazar-Mard narrated to us, Ibn Ḥabābah narrated to us, and al-Baghawī related the same report (1).
Through that same line back to al-Baghawī: Maḥmūd ibn Ghailān narrated to us, from Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, who said: Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh said, “I heard Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī say: Muʿāwiyah asked me, ‘How much was your father’s stipend?’
I answered, ‘Three hundred.’
So he fixed my allowance at three hundred as well; that was their practice—granting a man the same amount his father had received.
Later,” Abū Bakr continued, “I met Abū Isḥāq and his allowance had risen, by additional grants, to one thousand dirhams.”
Shuʿbah said: “Abū Isḥāq was older than Abū al-Bakhtarī; Abū al-Bakhtarī neither met nor saw ʿAlī.”
Through the same chain: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Azdi narrated to us, from Mūsā ibn ʿUthmān al-Ḥaḍramī, from Abū Isḥāq, who said, “ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—struck me with the whip at the place of ablution.”