, in his mastery of prophetic biography, military expeditions, genealogy, and the annals of the Arabs. He was scrupulously accurate in what he reported and possessed lofty chains of transmission.
He was born in 132 AH.
He heard ḥadīth from Qurrah ibn Khālid—his senior-most teacher—Shuʿbah, Juwayriyyah ibn Asmāʾ, ʿAwānah ibn al-Ḥakam, Ibn Abī Dhīb, Mubārak ibn Faḍālah, Ḥammād ibn Salamah, Sallām ibn Miskīn, and their peers.
He grew up in Basra.
Those who narrated from him include Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār, al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Usāmah, Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Mutawakkil, and others.
Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah said, “My father, Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī, and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn used to sit in the evenings at Muṣʿab’s doorway. One night a man rode by on a spirited donkey, finely dressed. He greeted us and posed his question specifically to Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn.
Yaḥyā said to him, ‘Abū al-Ḥasan, where are you heading?’
He replied, ‘To that generous man who fills the sleeve of my cloak with dinars and dirhams—Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī.’
When he had gone, Yaḥyā said, ‘Trustworthy, trustworthy, trustworthy.’
I asked my father, ‘Who is that man?’
He said, ‘That is al-Madāʾinī (1).’
Al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Usāmah said, ‘Al-Madāʾinī kept an unbroken fast for the thirty years before his death and was nearly one hundred years old. During his final illness he was asked, “What do you desire?” He replied, “I desire to stay alive.” (2)
He died in 224 AH.
He was an authority on the conquests, the campaigns, and poetry, and was trustworthy in all of that.
Others besides al-Ḥārith said that he died in 225 AH, and that he died in the house of