, their client, a Kufan, a prolific author, and one of the freedmen of Khālid ibn ʿUqbah ibn Abī Muʿayṭ.
He was born sometime after 130 AH and never saw his father—it seems the latter died while Yaḥyā was still in the womb.
He transmitted ḥadith from ʿĪsā ibn Ṭahmān, Mālik ibn Mighwal, Fiṭr ibn Khalīfah, Yūnus ibn Abī Isḥāq, Misʿar ibn Kidām, Sufyān al-Thawrī, Ḥamzah al-Zayyāt, Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim, al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥayy, Isrāʾīl, ʿAmmār ibn Ruzayq, al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Muhalhil, Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Abū Bakr al-Nahshalī, Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah, Sharīk, Ḥammād ibn Salamah, Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah, Abū al-Aḥwaṣ, Ibn ʿUyaynah, Quṭbah ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAyyāsh, and his brother Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh. From the latter he learned the precise transmission of ʿĀṣim’s Qurʾānic reading, and he never met Shuʿbah.
Among those who related traditions from him were Aḥmad, Isḥāq, Yaḥyā, ʿAlī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Khallāl, Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Mukharrimī, Maḥmūd ibn Ghaylān, Hārūn al-Ḥammāl, Mūsā ibn Ḥizām al-Tirmidhī, Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān al-Ruhāwī, ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, ʿAbdah al-Ṣaffār, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAffān al-ʿĀmirī, and many others besides.
He was judged trustworthy by Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn and by al-Nasāʾī.