a freedman of theirs, a Kufan with Shiʿite leanings, a silk dealer, and the client of a Qurashi woman.
He narrated hadith from Hisham ibn ʿUrwah, al-Aʿmash, Ibn Abi Layla, Yahya ibn Abi Unaysah, Abu al-Jahhaf Dawud ibn Abi ʿAwf, Ismaʿil ibn Abi Khalid, Talhah ibn Yahya, Kathir al-Nawwaʾ, Abu al-Jarud Ziyad ibn al-Mundhir, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Abi Sulayman, al-ʿAlaʾ ibn Salih, Fitr ibn Khalifah, Abu Hamzah al-Thumali, and many others.
Those who transmitted from him include Yunus ibn Muhammad al-Muʾaddib, ʿAmr ibn Hammad al-Qannad, Ahmad, Ibn Maʿin, Ibn Abi Shaybah, his brother ʿUthman, Muhammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Muharibi, Abu Maʿmar Ismaʿil al-Qatiʿi, al-Hasan ibn Hammad Sajjadah, Dawud ibn Rushayd, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar ibn Aban, Muhammad ibn Muqatil al-Marwazi, Muhammad ibn Muʿawiyah ibn Malij, and a great many others.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal said, “There is nothing wrong with him.”
Ibn Maʿin, Yaʿqub al-Sadusi, ʿAli ibn al-Madini, and a number of others declared him “reliable.”
Another report from Ibn al-Madini reads: “Truthful, but inclined to Shiʿism.”
Al-Jawzajani remarked, “He and his father were extreme in their doctrinal leanings.”
Abu Zurʿah said, “Truthful.”
Abu Hatim stated, “He was Shiʿite, yet his hadith is written down.”
ʿIsa ibn Yunus observed, “They are a household with Shiʿite sympathies, but there is no lying among them.”