al-Wādiʿī—and his grandfather’s name was Maymūn ibn Fayrūz, a mawlā of a woman from the Wādiʿ tribe. It was also said that he was in fact the mawlā of Muḥammad ibn al-Muntashir al-Hamdānī.
His birth: roughly in the year 120 AH, or thereabouts.
He narrated from his own father, ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal, Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī, al-Aʿmash, Dāwūd ibn Abī Hind, Abū Mālik al-Ashjaʿī, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, Mujālid, al-ʿAlāʾ ibn al-Musayyab, Hāshim ibn Hāshim al-Zuhrī, Mūsā al-Juhanī, Ibn ʿAwn, Ṣāliḥ ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Ḥayy, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥumayd ibn Abī Ghunayyah, Misʿar, Ḥajjāj ibn Arṭah, Shuʿbah, Ibn Isḥāq, and a great many others.
He even transmitted from Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah and Mālik.
He was counted among the great repositories of knowledge.
Those who reported from him include: Abū Dāwūd al-Ḥafarī, Yaḥyā ibn Ādam, Muʿallā ibn Manṣūr, Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā, Aḥmad, Ibn Maʿīn, the two sons of Abū Shaybah, Hārūn ibn Maʿrūf, Abū Kurayb, Hannād, ʿAmr ibn Rāfiʿ al-Qazwīnī, ʿAlī ibn Muslim al-Ṭūsī, Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿArafah, Ziyād ibn Ayyūb, Ibn Zurārah—ʿAmr, not ʿUmar—Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Muḥāribī, Yaʿqūb al-Dawraqī, and many others besides them.
Abū Khālid al-Aḥmar said, “He was outstanding in the way he received knowledge.”
al-Ḥasan ibn Thābit remarked, “I lodged with the most learned jurist of Kūfah—meaning Yaḥyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah.”
ʿAmr al-Nāqid narrated that Ibn ʿUyaynah said: “None of our companions who came to us resembled…"