— He narrated from Safwān ibn Ṣāliḥ, ʿĪsā ibn Ḥammād, Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, and many others.
Among those who transmitted from him were Ibn ʿAdī, Ibn al-Sunnī, Ḥamzah al-Kinānī, and Ibn al-Muqriʾ.
Al-Dāraqutnī said: “There is nothing blameworthy about him.”
I (the author) say: He died in Rabīʿ al-Ākhir, in the year three hundred and ten (310 AH).

135 – Abū Zurʿah the Judge, Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān al-Thaqafī *
The leading authority, the eminent judge, Abū Zurʿah Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Zurʿah al-Thaqafī, their client from Damascus. His house was in the Bāb al-Barīd quarter (1), and his grandfather had been a Jew who embraced Islam.
He related very little; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaṣāʾirī and others received ḥadith from him. Ibn ʿAsākir (2) mentioned him.
He followed a sound legal methodology, was chaste, and remarkably careful.
He assumed the judiciary of Egypt in 284 AH, adhering to the Shāfiʿī school, and later became the judge of Damascus as well.
He had supported the ruler Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn and removed Abū Aḥmad al-Muwaffaq from the succession pact because the latter had vied with his brother, the caliph al-Muʿtamid. Thus Abū Zurʿah stood beside the pulpit in Damascus before the Friday sermon and proclaimed: “People! I call you to witness that I have deposed Abū Ahmaq…"