Ḥanbal, from whom he took down legal questions and other useful points; yet he never related from him any hadith with a full isnād, for Aḥmad had already ceased narrating.
He also heard from: Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah—and did so copiously—Jubārah ibn al-Mughallīs, Yaḥyā ibn Bishr al-Ḥarīrī, Shaybān ibn Farrūkh, Suwayd ibn Saʿīd, Hudbah ibn Khālid, Muḥammad ibn Rumḥ, Dāwūd ibn Rushayd, Muḥammad ibn Abān al-Wāsiṭī, Ḥarmalah ibn Yaḥyā, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUbayd al-Ḥarrānī, Yaʿqūb ibn Ḥumayd ibn Kāsib, ʿĪsā ibn Ḥammād Zughbah, Sahnūn ibn Saʿīd the jurist, Huraim ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, Minjāb ibn al-Ḥārith, ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah, ʿUbayd Allāh al-Qawārīrī, Abū Kurayb, Bundār, Hannād, al-Fallās, Kathīr ibn ʿUbayd, and a host of others.
He devoted himself to this discipline with a diligence beyond compare, bringing a vast reservoir of knowledge to the Iberian Peninsula; thanks to him, together with Muḥammad ibn Waḍḍāḥ (1), that region became a center of hadith study. The number of his teachers from whom he took transmissions reached 284 men.
Those who narrated from him include: his son Aḥmad; Ayyūb ibn Sulaymān al-Murrī; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Umawī; Aslam ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz; Muḥammad ibn Wazīr; Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar ibn Lubābah; al-Ḥasan ibn Saʿd al-Kinānī; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yūnus al-Murādī al-Qabrī; ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Ḥamdūn; Hishām ibn al-Walīd al-Ghāfiqī; and others.
He was an imam, a mujtahid, righteous, god-fearing, truthful and sincere—eminent in both knowledge and practice, without peer or equal. He issued legal verdicts on the basis of transmitted reports and would imitate no one.
He studied jurisprudence in Ifrīqiyah under Sahnūn ibn Saʿīd.
Aḥmad ibn Abī Khaythamah mentioned him, saying, “We used to call him nothing but ‘the Broom,’ and is there…”