Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh; Muʿādh ibn Hishām; ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Sāmī; and Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAdī.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Numayr; Muḥammad ibn Bishr; Zayd ibn Ḥubāb; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bakr; Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī; Abū ʿĀṣim; ʿAbd al-Razzāq; Abū Nuʿaym; ʿAffān; and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī al-Juʿfī.
Abū al-Naḍr; Yaḥyā ibn Ādam; Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Muqriʾ; Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad; Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAqadī; ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAbd al-Wārith; Rūḥ ibn ʿUbādah; Aswad ibn ʿĀmir; Wahb ibn Jarīr; Yūnus ibn Muḥammad; Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb; Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd, and many others besides.
He even narrated from Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, Hārūn ibn Maʿrūf, and a number of his own contemporaries.
The shaykhs from whom he transmits in the Musnad come to a little over two hundred and eighty.
ʿAbd Allāh said, “My father told me, ‘ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh narrated to us’—and that was before the miḥnah.” ʿAbd Allāh also said, “After the miḥnah my father did not relate anything from him.”
I say: What ʿAbd Allāh means is that his father carried nothing from him after the ordeal. Otherwise, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad’s audition of the rest of the Musnad from his father took place several years after the miḥnah, around the year 228 AH. Indeed, ʿAbd Allāh heard nothing—neither from his father nor from anyone else—until after the ordeal, for in those days he was still a discerning child and not yet attending sessions of audition—Allah knows best.
Those who narrated from him include: al-Bukhārī, who recorded a single report; and, through Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan, another report in the chapters on the military campaigns. Muslim also transmitted from him, as did Abū Dāwūd with a considerable collection.
Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasaʾī, al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah likewise transmitted—through an unnamed intermediary—from him.
Among his transmitters as well were his two sons, Ṣāliḥ and ʿAbd Allāh; his cousin, Ḥanbal ibn Isḥāq; and several of his own teachers, foremost among them ʿAbd al-Razzāq.