—a leading authority in Islam, the hadith scholar of Baghdad and its chief ḥāfiẓ, Abū Muʿāwiyah al-Salamī, their client, originally from Wāsiṭ.
He was born in the year 104 AH.
He studied under al-Zuhri and ʿAmr ibn Dīnār in Mecca, though he did not transmit much from either of them, and they were the senior-most of his teachers.
He also narrated from Manṣūr ibn Zādhān, Ḥuṣayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Abū Bishr, Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī, Abū al-Zubayr, Mughīrah, Sulaymān al-Taymī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ṣuhayb, ʿAlī ibn Zayd, Abū Isḥāq al-Shaybānī, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, Yaʿlā ibn ʿAṭāʾ, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Isḥāq, Abū Hāshim al-Rummānī, Ḥumayd al-Ṭawīl, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ al-Sammān, ʿAṭāʾ ibn al-Sāʾib, al-Aʿmash, and many others.
Among those who transmitted from him were Ibn Isḥāq, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Jaʿfar, Shuʿbah, and Sufyān—despite being counted among his own teachers—as well as Ḥammād ibn Zayd, Ibn al-Mubārak, a group of his contemporaries, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, ʿAffān, Qutaybah, Aḥmad, ʿAmr ibn ʿAwn, Musaddad, Ibn al-Madīnī, the two sons of Abī Shaybah, ʿAlī ibn Ḥajar, ʿAlī ibn Muslim al-Ṭūsī, ʿAmr al-Nāqid, Abū ʿUbayd, Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ al-Dūlābī, al-Jarjarāʾī (1), Shujāʿ ibn Makhlad, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Harawī, Yaʿqūb al-Dawraqī, Abū Maʿmar al-Qaṭīʿī, and Khalaf ibn Sālim,