He was counted among the leading mutakallimūn (speculative theologians), the foremost poets, and the principal authorities on logic.
He produced a number of written works.
His command of Arabic language and of ʿarūḍ (classical prosody) was formidable; he raised objections to some of al-Khalīl’s foundational rules, illustrating his points with examples other than those employed by al-Khalīl. He also composed on logic, and he authored a didactic poem that spans several disciplines and runs to roughly four thousand lines.
He was regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of the age.
He settled in Egypt and died there in the year 293 AH.
- Muṭayyan — Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥaḍramī
The shaykh, the ḥāfiẓ, the trustworthy narrator, and the hadith scholar of Kūfah: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sulaymān al-Ḥaḍramī, nicknamed Muṭayyan.
He met Abū Nuʿaym al-Malāʾī.
He heard hadith from Aḥmad ibn Yūnus, Yaḥyā ibn Bishr al-Ḥarīrī, Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr al-Ashʿathī, Yaḥyā al-Ḥimmānī, the sons of Abū Shaybah, ʿAlī ibn Ḥakīm, and their contemporaries.
Among those who transmitted from him were Abū Bakr al-Najjād, Ibn ʿUqda, al-Ṭabarānī, Abū Bakr al-Ismāʿīlī, ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bakkāʾī, ʿAlī ibn Ḥassān al-Jadīlī, and Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dārim.
Ibn Abī Dārim said, “With my own hand I wrote down from Muṭayyan one hundred thousand hadiths.”