the Kufan, the blind jurist.

He is classed among the junior tābiʿīn, yet I know of no report that he took directly from any of the Companions.

He narrated from: Abū Wāʾil, Mujāhid, Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, al-Shaʿbī, ʿIkrimah, Umm Mūsā—the concubine of ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him)—Abū Razīn al-Asadī, Nuʿaym ibn Abī Hind, Maʿbad ibn Khālid, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Nuʿm, Abū Maʿshar Ziyād ibn Ḥabīb, al-Ḥārith al-ʿUklī, Saʿd ibn ʿUbaydah, Simāk ibn Ḥarb, and others.

Those who transmitted from him include Sulaymān al-Taymī—himself a tābiʿī—Shuʿbah, al-Thawrī, Zāʾidah, Zuhayr, Abū ʿAwānah, Hushaym, Ibrāhīm ibn Ṭahmān, Isrāʾīl, al-Ḥasan ibn Ṣāliḥ, Suʿayr ibn al-Khims, al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Muhallhil, Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh, Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Taḥḥān, ʿUmar ibn ʿUbayd, ʿAbthar ibn al-Qāsim, al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Muḥammad al-Naḥwī, Manṣūr ibn Abī al-Aswad, Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl, and many others.

Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad narrated from Shuʿbah who said, “Mughīrah’s memory was stronger than that of al-Ḥakam.” In another wording he said, “His memory surpassed that of Ḥammād.”

Nūʿaym ibn Ḥammād reported from Ibn Fuḍayl who said, “Mughīrah used to practise tadlīs (concealing an intermediary transmitter), so we would only write down what he introduced with: ‘Ibrāhīm narrated to us…’”

Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh said, “Mughīrah was the most learned of them in jurisprudence; I never saw anyone more knowledgeable than he, so I stayed with him.”

Yaḥyā ibn al-Mughīrah related—on the authority of Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd—that Mughīrah said, “Nothing that reached my ears has ever slipped from my memory.”

I say: By Allah, this is true retention—not the ‘memorisation’ of one who studies a book several times until he can recite it, then stumbles over it, then studies and memorises it again, only to forget it, or most of it.