He heard from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Darāwardī, ʿAlī ibn Hāshim, Ibn al-Mubārak, ʿUbayd Allah al-Ashjaʿī, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, Muḥammad ibn Fuḍayl, and a number of the leading scholars of Kufa.

Those who transmitted from him include Muslim, Abū Dāwūd, Abū Zurʿah, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAlī al-Marwazī, al-Baghawī, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Sarrāj, and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdus ibn Kāmil al-Sarrāj.

Abū Ḥātim said: “Reliable (ṣadūq).”

Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Thaqafī said: “Mushkadanah once noticed that someone had written the word ‘Mushkadanah’ on the margin of his book. He became angry and said, ‘Abū Nuʿaym was the one who nicknamed me that. Whenever I visited him, I would put on fine clothes and perfume myself, and as soon as he saw me he would say, “Here comes Mushkadanah.”’”

It was said that a mushkadanah is a vessel for musk, and that mushk means musk itself.

It was also said that Mushkadanah had Shiʿite leanings.

Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ vocalised the name Mushkadanah with a ḍammah on the first letter and a fatḥah on the third; our shaykh al-Mizzī added that the kāf may likewise take a ḍammah, which is permissible.

Ibn ʿAsākir stated that he died in Muḥarram of the year 239 AH, may Allah have mercy on him.

61 – Yaḥyā ibn Ḥabīb ibn ʿArabī al-Baṣrī * (M, 4)
The Imām, ḥāfiẓ, and firmly grounded authority, Abū Zakariyyā al-Baṣrī.

He narrated from Ḥammād ibn Zayd, Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ, and Marḥūm ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.