He was born around the year 170 AH.

He heard traditions from Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, ʿUbaydah ibn Ḥumayd, Abū Muʿāwiyah al-Ḍarīr, Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ, Ibn ʿUlayyah, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Muʿādh ibn Muʿādh, Rūḥ ibn ʿUbādah, Abū Qaṭan, Imām Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāfiʿī, and their peers.

Among those who narrated from him were Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Mājah.

It has been claimed that Muslim related from him in the introduction to his Ṣaḥīḥ, but in fact Muslim narrated from Ibrāhīm ibn Khālid al-Yashkurī, a different person—Allah willing.

Others who transmitted from him include Qāsim ibn Zakariyyā al-Muṭarriz, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṣūfī, Abū’l-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Sarrāj, Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Dhariḥ al-ʿUkbarī, and many more besides them.

He collected ḥadith and authored works.

Abū Bakr al-Aʿyan said: “I asked Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal about him, and he replied, ‘I have known him to be a man of the Sunnah for fifty years, and in my view he is cut from the very same mold (1) as Sufyān al-Thawrī (2).’”

Al-Nasāʾī said: “Reliable, trustworthy, one of the jurists (3).”

Abū Ḥātim Ibn Ḥibbān said: “He was among the leading imams of the world in jurisprudence, knowledge, piety, and virtue.”

He authored books, derived subsidiary rulings from the Sunnah, and championed it—may Allah the Exalted have mercy on him (4).

Al-Khaṭīb (5) mentioned him, praised him, and said: “He passed away in Ṣafar of the year 240 AH.”