ibn Rabab ibn Ḥabīb ibn Suwāʾah ibn ʿĀmir ibn Saʿsaʿah. He was a ḥāfiẓ, an imam, reliable, and devout; his kunyah was Abū ʿĀmir al-Suwayʿī, and he was from Kufah.
He narrated from ʿĪsā ibn Ṭahmān, Mālik ibn Mighwal, ʿĀṣim ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUmari, Yūnus ibn Abī Isḥāq, Misʿar, Shuʿbah, Waraqāʾ, Ḥamzah al-Zayyāt, Isrāʾīl, and—most copiously—from Sufyān al-Thawrī; also from Ṣafwān ibn Abī al-Ṣaḥbāʾ, Wahb ibn Ismāʿīl, Abū al-Ashhab al-ʿAtāridī, and many others.
To the best of my knowledge he never travelled in search of hadith, yet he was one of the great repositories of knowledge.
Those who transmitted from him include Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah, Hannād, Maḥmūd ibn Ghaylān, Hārūn al-Ḥammāl, Abū Qudāmah al-Sarakhsī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Dhuhlī, al-Bukhārī—who cited him in his Ṣaḥīḥ—Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī, Abū Umayyah al-Ṭarsūsī, ʿAbbās al-Dūrī, Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān al-Ruhāwī, Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Narsī, Isḥāq ibn Sayyār al-Naṣībī, Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Shākir, al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Usāmah, Ḥafṣ ibn ʿUmar Sanjah, Ḥanbal ibn Isḥāq, his son ʿUqbah, and many others.
He began the pursuit of knowledge while still very young.
Yaḥyā ibn Ādam said, “He is two years younger than I am.”
Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, in the version reported by Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah, said: “Qabīṣah is trustworthy in every respect except in the narrations of Sufyān; in that area he is not especially strong, for he heard from him while still a boy.” (1)