Known as al-Iskāfī al-Athram al-Ṭāʾī—others say al-Kalbī—he was one of the leading scholars, the author of al-Sunan, and a direct student of Imām Aḥmad.

He was born during the caliphate of Hārūn al-Rashīd.

Among the shaykhs from whom he received ḥadīth were: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bakr al-Sahmī—God willing—Hawdhah ibn Khalīfah, Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī, Abū Nuʿaym, ʿAffān, al-Qaʿnabī, Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣāliḥ the scribe of al-Layth, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rajāʾ al-Ghudānī, Ḥaramī ibn Ḥafṣ, Musaddad ibn Musarhad, Mūsā ibn Ismāʿīl, ʿAmr ibn ʿAwn, Qālūn ʿĪsā, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Mūsā al-Miṣṣīṣī, Muslim ibn Ibrāhīm, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Jaʿfar al-Nufaylī, Ibn Abī Shaybah, and many others.

Those who narrated from him include: al-Nasāʾī in his Sunan, Mūsā ibn Hārūn, Yaḥyā ibn Ṣāʿid, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭāhir al-Qazwīnī, ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā al-Jawharī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Shākir al-Zanjānī, and others.

He also composed a work on the hidden defects (ʿilal) of ḥadīth.

Al-Athram said: “I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh about the practice of taʿrīf in the provincial towns—people gathering in the mosques on the Day of ʿArafah—and he replied, ‘I hope there is no harm in it. More than one of the early scholars did so: al-Ḥasan, Bakr ibn ʿAbd Allāh, Thābit, and Muḥammad ibn Wāsiʿ used to attend the mosque on the Day of ʿArafah.’

“I then asked him about reciting the Qurʾān with melodious tunes. He said, ‘Anything newly-invented does not appeal to me, except when it is a man’s natural voice and he is not forcing it.’ (1)