He came to be recognised as the scholar with the loftiest chains of transmission in Iraq, occupying the seat of teaching and giving legal verdicts for sixty years.

Among those who narrated from him were Duʿlij ibn Ahmad, al-Tabarani, al-Daraqutni, Abu ʿAbd Allah ibn Jamiʿ, Ibn Shahin, Ibrahim ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Khurshidh Qawlah, Ibn al-Salt al-Ahwazi, Abu Muhammad ibn al-Bayyiʿ, Abu ʿUmar ibn Mahdi, and many others.

Abu Bakr al-Khatib said: “He was a man of virtue and devotion. He served as a court witness for twenty years and held the judgeship of Kufa for sixty years (1).”

Ibn Jamiʿ al-Saydawi said: “With Judge al-Mahamili there were seventy persons from among the disciples of Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah (2).”

Abu Bakr al-Dawudi said: “Ten thousand men would attend al-Mahamili’s session (3).”

He asked to be relieved of the judiciary before the year 320 AH, and he was praised for his tenure (4).

In 270 AH he established, in his house at Kufa, a circle for jurisprudence, and scholars and people of insight kept frequenting it ever after (5).

Muhammad ibn al-Iskaf said: “I saw in a dream someone proclaiming, ‘Indeed Allah averts calamity from the people of Baghdad through al-Mahamili’ (6).”