al-ʿUsfūrī, the Baṣran, known by the sobriquet “Shabāb,” author of al-Tārīkh, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt, and other works.
He received ḥadith from: his own father; Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ; Ziyād ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Bakkāʾī; Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah; ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā; Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar (Ghundar); Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayyah; Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAdī; Muʿtamir ibn Sulaymān; Muḥammad ibn Sawāʾ; Khālid ibn al-Ḥārith; Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān; Ibn Mahdī; Umayya ibn Khālid; Ḥātim ibn Muslim; Hishām al-Kalbī; ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Madāʾinī, and many others.
Our teacher notes in Tahdhīb al-Kamāl that he is also said to have narrated from Ḥammād ibn Salamah. This is a clear mistake, for the man did not even live long enough to hear Ḥammād ibn Zayd—though, in my view, he probably saw him.
Among those who transmitted from him were al-Bukhārī—who cites seven, or perhaps more, of his reports in his Ṣaḥīḥ—Baqī ibn Makhlad, Harb al-Karmānī, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dārimī, Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad al-Ahwāzī, Mūsā ibn Zakariyyā al-Tustarī, ʿAbdān al-Jawāliqī, Zakarīyā al-Sājī, and many others.
He was truthful, a skilled genealogist, and deeply versed in the prophetic campaigns, the famous days of Arab history, and the science of narrator evaluation.
Some authorities declared him reliable. Ibn ʿAdī said, “He is ṣadūq, one of the alert transmitters.” I say: others weakened him without any valid proof.
Muṭayyin and others reported that he died in 240 AH. I say: he was then in his eighties, and the one who claimed that he died in 246 AH erred; that was the year his grandfather died, namely 160 AH.
Aḥmad ibn Hibat Allah told us—in the year 692 AH—on the authority of ʿAbd al-Muʿizz ibn Muḥammad; Tamīm informed us