Noah. Such is the lineage recorded by ʿAbd Allah b. [Abi] Saʿd al-Warraq (1), who connected it to the walāʾ (clientage) of al-Jarrāḥ b. ʿAbd Allah al-Ḥakamī. He was also known as Abū Nuwās al-Baṣrī. His father came from Damascus and had served in the army of Marwān b. Muḥammad; he later moved to Ahwāz, married a woman named Jalbān, and she bore him Abū Nuwās and another son called Abū Muʿādh.
Abū Nuwās then went to Basra, where he studied literature under Abū Zayd and Abū ʿUbayda. He read Sībawayh’s Kitāb, remained attached to Khalaf al-Aḥmar, and kept company with Yūnus b. Ḥabīb al-Jarmī, the grammarian.
Qāḍī Ibn Khallikān (2) adds that he also associated with Abū Usāma Wāliba b. al-Ḥubāb al-Kūfī.
He transmitted hadith from Azhar b. Saʿd, Ḥammād b. Zayd, Ḥammād b. Salamah, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid b. Ziyād, Muʿtamar b. Sulaymān, and Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Kathīr al-Ṣayrafī narrated from him, as did many others—among them al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Ghundar, and numerous celebrated scholars.
Among his well-known reports is the one transmitted by Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Kathīr al-Ṣayrafī, [from al-Ḥasan b. Hāniʾ], from Ḥammād b. Salamah, from Thābit, from Anas, who said that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Let none of you die except while thinking well of Allah, for a good opinion of Allah is the price of Paradise” (3).
Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm also said: “We entered upon him while he lay dying, and Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAlī al-Hāshimī said to him, ‘Abū ʿAlī, today you are in the last day of the days of this world and the first day of the days of the Hereafter, and between you and Allah stand certain matters (4); so repent to Allah for what you have done.’
He replied, ‘Are you trying to frighten me with Allah? Sit me up.’ So we sat him up, and he said, ‘Ḥammād b. Salamah related to me, from Yazīd al-Raqāshī, from Anas b. Mālik, that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Every prophet has an intercession, and I have reserved my intercession for the people of major sins among my community on the Day of Resurrection” (5). Now, do you not regard me as one of them?’”