and Ḥafṣah, Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī, Saʿīd al-Jurayrī, Rūḥ ibn al-Qāsim, and a number of others.
He never traveled in search of hadith.
Those who transmitted from him include: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī, Musaddad, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, Umayyah ibn Bisṭām, al-Qurāʾirī, Muḥammad ibn al-Minhāl al-Ḍarīr, Muḥammad ibn Minhāl—the brother of Ḥajjāj—Aḥmad ibn al-Miqdām, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī al-Jahḍamī, and many others.
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “He was the fragrant blossom of Basra—how precise he was, how vast his memorization!”
Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī said, “Reliable, an imam.”
Abū ʿAwanah al-Waḍḍāḥ remarked, “I accompanied Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ for forty years, and with every passing year he increased in goodness.”
Bishr al-Ḥāfī said, “Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ was exacting and a memorizer; I do not know that I have seen his like, nor the like of the soundness of his hadith.”
Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān stated, “There was no one here more firmly grounded than he.”
I say: He was a man of sunnah and adherence. He used to say, “Whoever attends the gathering of ʿAbd al-Wārith, let him not come near me.”
Naṣr ibn ʿAlī al-Jahḍamī said, “I saw Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ in a dream. I asked, ‘What did Allah do with you?’ He replied, ‘I was admitted into Paradise.’ I said, ‘For what reason?’ He answered, ‘Because of the abundance of prayer.’”
His father had been governor of al-Ubullah (1).
He was born in 101 AH and died in 182 AH.