al-Ḥimṣī al-ʿAnsī, their client (mawla).
He was born in the year 108 AH.
He heard ḥadith from Shuraḥbīl ibn Muslim al-Khawlānī, Muḥammad ibn Ziyād al-Alhānī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār al-Bahrānī, and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Jubayr ibn Nufayr—if that report is sound, for it appears in Sunan Abī Dāwūd—as well as from Ḍamḍam ibn Zurʿah, Tamīm ibn ʿAṭiyyah al-ʿAnsī, Asīd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Khathʿamī, Baḥīr ibn Saʿd, al-Zubaydī, Ḥabīb ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Ṭāʾī, Thawr ibn Yazīd, Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān, ʿĀṣim ibn Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Busr al-Ḥaḍramī, Ṣafwān ibn ʿAmr, Thābit ibn ʿAjlān, Sulaymān ibn Sulaym al-Kinānī, and many other scholars of Syria.
Later, when he travelled south, he narrated from Ḍamrah ibn Rabīʿah.
He also transmitted from Zayd ibn Aslam, Suhayl ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ, Abū Ṭuwālah, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Ḥusayn, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUthmān ibn Khuthaym, ʿUmārah ibn Ghaziyyah, Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd, Ibn Jurayj, Layth ibn Abī Sulaym, and a host of scholars from the Ḥijāz and Iraq.
Among those latter regions he made numerous mistakes, unlike in the traditions of his own land; the ḥadith of his compatriots he preserved and, by Allah’s permission, all but mastered.
He was an ocean of knowledge, truthful in speech, firm in his religious practice, and devoted to the Sunnah.