—Abū Bisṭām al-Azdi al-ʿAtakī, their client, originally from Wāsiṭ, the leading scholar and shaykh of Basra.
He settled in Basra from early childhood, met al-Ḥasan [al-Baṣrī], and learned a number of issues from him.
He transmitted hadith from Anas ibn Sīrīn, Ismāʿīl ibn Rajāʾ, Salamah ibn Kuhayl, Jāmiʿ ibn Shaddād, Saʿīd ibn Abī Saʿīd al-Maqburī, Jabalah ibn Suḥaym, al-Ḥakam ibn ʿUtaybah, ʿAmr ibn Murrah, Zubayd ibn al-Ḥārith al-Yāmī, Qatādah ibn Diʿāmah, Muʿāwiyah ibn Qurrah, Abū Jamrah al-Ḍubāʿī, ʿAmr ibn Dīnār, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr, ʿUbayd ibn al-Ḥasan, ʿAdī ibn Thābit, Ṭalḥah ibn Muṣarrif, al-Minhal ibn ʿAmr, Saʿīd ibn Abī Burdah, Simāk ibn al-Walīd, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Manṣūr ibn al-Muʿtamir, and many others besides them.
He also saw Nājiya ibn Kaʿb, the shaykh of Abū Isḥāq al-Sabiʿī.
He was one of the reservoirs of knowledge; in his time no one surpassed him in hadith, and in sheer abundance he ranked with al-Awzāʿī (1), Maʿmar (2), and al-Thawrī (3).
ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī said: “He has about two thousand hadiths.”
I say: I think he actually narrates far more than that.
It was said that he was born in the year 80 AH, during the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. Abū Zayd al-Harawī held that he was born in 82 AH.
A great multitude of scholars narrated from him, and his hadith spread throughout the lands.