He studied under: Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Wahb ibn Jarīr, Abū ʿUbaydah ibn al-Muthannā, Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī, Abū ʿĀmir al-ʿAqadī, al-Aṣmaʿī, and Yaʿqūb al-Ḥaḍramī; the Qur’an was recited to him, and he eventually held formal teaching sessions in Qur’an recitation, hadith, and Arabic.

Those who transmitted from him include: Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāʾī in their two collections, Abū Bakr al-Bazzār in his Musnad, Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Rūyānī, Ibn Ṣāʿid, Abū Bakr ibn Durayd, Abū Rawq al-Hizzānī, and many others.

Leading imams were trained by him, among them Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mubarrad. He was an avid collector of books and even traded in them (1).

He possessed wide-ranging expertise in dialects, poetry (2), prosody, and the elucidation of obscure passages.

It was also said that he was not particularly outstanding in syntax (3).

His writings include: Kitāb Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān (Grammatical Analysis of the Qur’an); Kitāb Mā Yalḥanu fīhi al-ʿĀmmah (Common Linguistic Errors); Kitāb al-Maqṣūr waʾl-Mamdūd (Words with Final Alif and Those with Long Vowel Yāʾ); Kitāb al-Maqāṭiʿ waʾl-Mabādiʾ (Disjunct and Initial Letters); Kitāb al-Qirāʾāt (the Readings); Kitāb al-Faṣāḥah (Eloquence); Kitāb al-Wuḥūsh (Wild Beasts); Kitāb Ikhtilāf al-Maṣāḥif (Variant Qur’anic Codices); and other works (4).