He was born in Kufah in 107 AH. While still very young—indeed a mere boy—he set out in pursuit of hadith, met the senior scholars, and drew from them an abundant store of knowledge. He mastered, refined, gathered, and authored; he lived to a great age, crowds pressed in upon him, the loftiest chains of transmission ended with him, students journeyed to him from distant regions, and by the length of his life he linked grandchildren to their grandfathers.
He began hearing hadith in 119 AH, then in 120 AH, and continued thereafter. Among those from whom he received were: Amr ibn Dinar—of whom he narrated a great deal—Ziyad ibn ‘Ilaqah, al-Aswad ibn Qays, Ubayd Allah ibn Abi Yazid, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, ‘Asim ibn Abi al-Najud, Abu Ishaq al-Sabi‘i, Abd Allah ibn Dinar, Zayd ibn Aslam, Abd al-Malik ibn ‘Umayr, Muhammad ibn al-Munkadir, Abu al-Zubayr, Husayn ibn Abd al-Rahman, Salim Abu al-Nadr, Shabib ibn Gharqadah, ‘Abdah ibn Abi Lubabah, Ali ibn Zayd ibn Jud‘an, Abd al-Karim al-Jazari, ‘Ata ibn al-Sa’ib, Ayyub al-Sakhtiyani, al-‘Alaʾ ibn Abd al-Rahman, Qasim al-Rijal, Mansur ibn al-Mu‘tamir, Mansur ibn Safiyyah al-Hajabi, Yazid ibn Abi Ziyad, Hisham ibn ‘Urwah, Humayd al-Tawil, Yahya ibn Sa‘id al-Ansari, Abu Ya‘fur al-Abdi, Ibn ‘Ajlan, Ibn Abi Layla, Sulayman al-A‘mash, Musa ibn ‘Uqbah, Suhayl ibn Abi Salih, Abd Allah ibn Abi Najih, Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Qasim, Umayyah ibn Safwan al-Jumahi, Jami‘ ibn Abi Rashid, Hakim ibn Jubayr, Sa‘d ibn Ibrahim—the judge of Medina—Salih, the freedman of al-Tawʾamah (of whom he said, “I heard from him while his saliva was dribbling”), Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Husayn, Abu al-Zinad Abd Allah ibn Dhakwan, Abd al-Aziz ibn Rufay‘, Ishaq ibn Abd Allah ibn Abi Talhah, and Isma‘il ibn Muhammad.