Abū ʿAbd Allah—their Umayyad client, a Basran perfume-seller, one of the freedmen of the household of Muʿāwiyah. He was the father of ʿUbays and the grandfather of Bishr ibn ʿUbays.
He transmitted hadith from Thābit al-Bunānī, Abū ʿImrān al-Jawnī, Abū Naʿāmah al-Saʿdī, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Zayd al-ʿAmmī, his own father ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū Sumayr Ḥakīm ibn Khidhām, Sahl ibn ʿAṭiyyah, his uncle ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Mihrān, and ʿIsl ibn Sufyān. He even descended in isnād to relate from the junior authority Dāwūd ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿAṭṭār, though he was not a prolific narrator.
Those who narrated from him include Sufyān al-Thawrī—one of his own teachers—al-Khuraybī, Abū Nuʿaym, Zakariyyā ibn ʿAdī, Musaddad, ʿAbdān ibn ʿUthmān, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, Sawwār ibn ʿAbd Allah al-ʿAnbarī, Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, Bundār, Ibn al-Muthannā, ʿAmr an-Nāqid, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Khallād al-Bāhilī, Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm ad-Dawraqī, Bakr ibn Khalaf, al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ḥasan al-Marwazī, Yaḥyā ibn Ḥabīb, Yaʿqūb ad-Dawraqī, and many others besides them.
Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, and al-Nasāʾī all declared him trustworthy.
Al-Khuraybī said, “I have not seen in Basra anyone better than him—and than Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah.”
Al-Bukhārī relates that Bishr ibn ʿUbays said: “My grandfather died in 188 AH, and at the time of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s death he was seven years old.”