ibn Māhān; Muṣʿab ibn al-Miqdām; Abū Hammām Muḥammad ibn Muḥabbab; Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Firyābī; and Makhlad ibn Yazīd.
Also Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh, Muʿāwiyah ibn Hishām, and Muʿallā ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Wāsiṭī;
Mihrān ibn Abī ʿUmar, Abū Ḥudhayfah Mūsā ibn Masʿūd, and Muʿammal ibn Ismāʿīl;
Nāʾil ibn Najīḥ and al-Nuʿmān ibn ʿAbd al-Salām;
Hārūn ibn al-Mughīrah;
Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ and al-Walīd ibn Muslim;
Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, Yaḥyā ibn Sulaym al-Ṭāʾifī, Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abī Ghunayyah, Yaḥyā ibn Yamān; Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥakīm, Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ, Yazīd ibn Hārūn; Yaʿlā ibn ʿUbayd; Yūsuf ibn Asbāṭ; and Yūnus ibn Abī Yaʿfūr.
Likewise Abū Aḥmad al-Zubayrī, Abū Bakr al-Ḥanafī, Abū Dāwūd al-Ḥafarī, Abū Sufyān al-Maʿmarī, Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAqadī, and many others besides them.
Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb the ascetic said: “Abū al-Muthannā narrated to us:
‘I heard the people of Marw saying, “The Thawrī has arrived! The Thawrī has arrived!” So I went out to see him, and behold, he was a mere lad whose face had only just begun to show its first down. (1)’
I remark: His name was already being trumpeted while he was still very young, owing to his exceptional intelligence and prodigious memory. He was narrating ḥadīth while still a youth.
ʿAbd al-Razzāq and others transmitted from Sufyān that he said, “I have never entrusted anything to my heart and had it betray me.”
I say: The finest chain of transmission for the Iraqis is: Sufyān, from Manṣūr, from Ibrāhīm, from ʿAlqamah, from ʿAbd Allāh.
Shuʿbah, Ibn ʿUyaynah, Abū ʿĀṣim, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn and others declared: “Sufyān al-Thawrī is the Commander of the Believers in ḥadīth.”