the son of ʿAwn ibn Ziyād ibn Bisṭām. Some maintained that his grandfather’s name was Ghiyāth ibn Ziyād ibn ʿAwn ibn Bisṭām al-Ghaṭafānī—by clientage a Murri. He was Baghdadi and one of the eminent authorities.
He was born in 158 AH.
He heard hadith from Ibn al-Mubārak, Hushaym, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh, ʿAbbād ibn ʿAbbād, Ismāʿīl ibn Mujālid ibn Saʿīd, Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, Muʿtamar ibn Sulaymān, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, Ghundar, Abū Muʿāwiyah, Ḥātim ibn Ismāʿīl, Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Marwān ibn Muʿāwiyah, Hishām ibn Yūsuf, ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus, Wakīʿ, Maʿn, Abū Ḥafṣ al-Abbār, ʿUmar ibn ʿUbayd, ʿAlī ibn Hāshim, Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān, Ibn Mahdī, ʿAffān, and many others throughout Iraq, the Hijaz, the Jazīrah, Syria, and Egypt.
Among those who narrated from him were Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Muḥammad ibn Saʿd, Abū Khaythamah, Hannād ibn al-Sarī, several of his contemporaries, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, ʿAbbās al-Dūrī, Abū Bakr al-Ṣāghānī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq ibn Manṣūr, ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Dārimī, Abū Zurʿah, Abū Ḥātim, Isḥāq al-Kawsaj, Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Junayd, Muʿāwiyah ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Ashʿarī, Ḥanbal ibn Isḥāq, Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad Jazrah, Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Marwazī, Abū Maʿīn al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ḥasan al-Rāzī, Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah, Muṭayyin, Muḍar ibn Muḥammad al-Asadī, al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Ghassān al-Ghallābī, Abū Zurʿah al-Naṣrī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Tammār, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad, Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ Kaylajah, and ʿAlī ibn—