Al-Khaṭīb said (1): His full name is given as ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muslim ibn Sanfīrūn ibn Isfandiyār, Abū Muslim al-Marwazī, the architect of the Abbasid state. He transmitted ḥadith from Abū al-Zubayr [Muḥammad ibn Muslim al-Makkī], Thābit al-Bunānī, Ibrāhīm, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās. Ibn ʿAsākir added (2) among his teachers: Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ḥarmala, and ʿIkrima, the client of Ibn ʿAbbās.

Ibn ʿAsākir said (3): Those who narrated from him include Ibrāhīm ibn Maymūn al-Ṣāʿigh, Bishr—the father of Muṣʿab ibn Bishr—ʿAbd Allāh ibn Shubrama, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Munīb al-Marwazī, and Qudayd ibn Manīʿ, Abū Muslim’s son-in-law.

Al-Khaṭīb also said (4): Abū Muslim was a bold man, possessed of keen judgment, intellect, strategy, and resolve. Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr killed him at al-Madāʾin.

Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī records in Tārīkh Iṣfahān: His name was ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUthmān ibn Yasar; it is said that he was born in Iṣfahān and that he narrated ḥadith from al-Suddī and others. Some maintain that his name was Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUthmān ibn Yasar ibn Sandus ibn Jūdran, a descendant of Buzurjmihr. He was known as Abū Isḥāq and was raised in Kūfa. His father entrusted him to ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā al-Sarrāj, who brought him to Kūfa when he was seven. When Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad, the Imām, sent him to Khurasan, he told him, “Change your name and your teknonym.” He therefore adopted the name ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muslim and the kunya Abū Muslim. He departed for Khurasan at the age of seventeen, riding a donkey fitted only with a pack-saddle; Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad supplied him with travel expenses from his own purse. He entered Khurasan in that humble state, yet in time the whole of Khurasan, in its entirety, came under his control.

Some relate that on the way, a man from one of the taverns (5) rushed at his donkey and tore out its tail (6). When Abū Muslim later gained power, he leveled that spot to the ground, and it remained a desolation thereafter.

Others say that he was taken captive while still a boy and was purchased by one of the Abbasid missionaries for four hundred dirhams. Later, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad, the Imām, asked that he be given to him and bought him, whereupon Abū Muslim became affiliated to him. When dispatching him to Khurasan, Ibrāhīm married him to the daughter of Abū al-Najm ʿImrān ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṭāʾī, one of their propagandists, and paid on his behalf a dowry of four hundred dirhams. Abū Muslim had two daughters: Asmāʾ, who left descendants, and Fāṭima, who did not.