and he narrated from Salamah ibn Wardān, ʿĪsā ibn Abī ʿĪsā al-Ḥannāṭ, and others of the younger Successors; from Ibn Jurayj—whom he accompanied for years—Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, Usāmah ibn Zayd al-Laythī, Ismāʿīl ibn Rāfiʿ al-Madanī, Ḥarīz ibn ʿUthmān, Ṣafwān ibn ʿAmr, ʿUthmān ibn al-Aswad, Maʿrūf ibn Kharrabūdh, Qurrah ibn Khālid, Yūnus ibn Yazīd al-Aylī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Maryam, al-Awzāʿī, Ayman ibn Nābil, Thawr ibn Yazīd, Ḥamzah al-Zayyāt—who heard him recite the Qur’an—Hammām ibn Yaḥyā, Shuʿbah, al-Thawrī, and many others.
Among those who transmitted from him were Hishām ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Rāzī, ʿAffān ibn Muslim, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Jumʿah ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Balkhī, ʿAmr ibn Rāfiʿ al-Qazwīnī, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Muqaddamī, Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd, Hannād ibn al-Sarī, Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd, Abū Ṭāhir ibn al-Sarḥ, Surayj ibn Yūnus, Abū Saʿīd al-Ashajj, ʿAmr al-Nāqid, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, Aḥmad ibn Nāṣiḥ al-Maṣṣīṣī, al-Jārūd ibn Muʿādh al-Balkhī, Abū Dāwūd al-Maṣāḥifī al-Balkhī, Sulaymān ibn Salm, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan al-Dhuhlī, and a host of others.
Yet, for all the breadth of his learning, his retention was weak; consequently his narrations are not cited as conclusive proof or relied upon as primary authority.
Al-Bukhārī stated, “Yahyā ibn Maʿīn spoke against him.”
Ibn Saʿd said, “People wrote down a great deal from him, but in the end they abandoned his hadith.”
Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Abbār related from Abū Ghassān Zunayj that ʿUmar ibn Hārūn said, “I have dictated seventy thousand of my reports: twenty thousand to Abū Juʾ, and such-and-such to ʿUthmān al-Burri (1).”
He asked, “Abū Ghassān, what was his condition?” He replied, “Bahz said, ‘I think—’”