their client, the Basran, the cloak-merchant (al-Karābisī), nicknamed al-Tāj, and one of the meticulous masters.
He was born sometime in the early second century AH, a few years after 110 AH.
He received hadith from Ḥusayn al-Muʿallim, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd ibn Abī Hind, ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī, Ibn Jurayj, Jaʿfar ibn Maymūn al-Anmāṭī, Maʿmar, Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, and—most copiously and accurately—from Shuʿbah.
Those who narrated from him include ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Ibn Rāhwayh, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, ʿAmr ibn ʿAlī, Muḥammad ibn Bashshār, Muḥammad ibn al-Muthannā, Muḥammad ibn al-Walīd al-Busrī, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿArʿarah, Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, Sulaymān ibn Ayyūb—the associate of al-Baṣrī—Aḥmad ibn Manīʿ, al-ʿAbbās ibn Yazīd al-Baḥrānī, Yaḥyā ibn Ḥakīm al-Muqawwam, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, and many others.
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn said, “He possessed the soundest book of anyone; some people tried to detect faults in Ghundar but could not.”
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal reported that Ghundar said, “I kept the company of Shuʿbah for twenty years.”
I (the author) say: I do not think he ever travelled for hadith beyond Basra, and it was Ibn Jurayj who first called him “Ghundar” (1). He had wearied Ibn Jurayj with his insistent questioning, and when the people of the Hijaz complained about him, Ibn Jurayj said, “You are nothing but a ghundar.”
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn also related: “One day Ghundar brought out a saddle-bag full of books and said, ‘Do your utmost to find a single error in them.’ We found nothing amiss in them, and he used to fast…"