Ibrāhīm ibn Isḥāq al-Ghasīlī related: Ṣāliḥ ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal narrated to me that his father said to him, “Since the time of Ibn al-Mubārak, Khurāsān has not produced anyone like Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā (1).”
Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj said: I heard al-Nabīl, Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Makfūf—who had sat in the company of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā—say, “One day Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh said to me, ‘Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā has become the imam of the scholars of both East and West.’ I responded, ‘In Khurāsān there has been no one comparable to him except Isḥāq; after Isḥāq, none matched al-Dhuhlī; after al-Dhuhlī, none matched Muslim; after Muslim, none matched Muḥammad ibn Naṣr al-Marwazī; after Ibn Naṣr, none matched Ibn Khuzaymah; after him, none matched Abū Ḥāmid ibn al-Sharqī; and after him, none matched Abū Bakr al-Ṣibghī.’”
— Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā ibn Kathīr ibn Wislāsa (2) ibn Shimlāla (3) ibn Manghāyā al-Laythī, the great imam, jurist of al-Andalus, Abū Muḥammad al-Laythī, the Berber, the Masmūdī, the Andalusian, from Córdoba.
His birth: in the year 152 AH.