He transmitted hadith from Abu Dawud al-Sijistani, Muhammad ibn Yunus al-Kudaymi, Thaʿlab, al-Mubarrad, Abu al-ʿAynaʾ, and many others.
Those who narrated from him included Ibn Hayyawayh, Abu Bakr ibn Shadhan, al-Daraqutni, Abu al-Hasan ibn al-Jundi, ʿAli ibn al-Qasim, Ibn Jumayʿ, Abu Ahmad al-Faradi, al-Husayn al-Ghadaʾiri, and several others.

He composed both poetry and prose and was renowned for the breadth of his learning.
He enjoyed intimate company with several caliphs; his speech was graceful, his words accepted, and his creed sound. Later, when straitened circumstances befell him, he left Baghdad. We have heard one of his small collections, and their forefather Ṣūl had been the ruler of Gurgān. (1)

Al-Ṣūlī died in 335 AH.

Muhammad ibn Isḥaq al-Nadim reports that al-Ṣūlī was a boon companion of the caliph al-Rāḍī, having first served as his tutor, and that he was the finest chess player of his age—people even coined proverbs about him. (2)

He passed away in Basra while in hiding, because he had transmitted a report concerning ʿAli (may Allah be pleased with him); the common folk sought him out to kill him. (3)

The elder al-Ṣūlī, Ibrāhīm ibn al-ʿAbbās the man of letters, (4) was the brother of ʿAbd Allah, the grandfather of this Abū Bakr.

In the same year there also died al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Qāṣṣ, the senior Shafiʿi scholar, and Muhammad ibn Jaʿfar.