He narrated from: ʿUbayd Allah b. Musa, al-Qaʿnabi, Abū Nuʿaym, and others; and from him narrated Ibn Ṣāʿid, al-Maḥāmilī, and Ibn al-Sammāk. He was regarded as trustworthy and truthful.

Muhammad b. Saʿdan (1), Abū Jaʿfar al-Bazzāz, heard from more than five hundred shaykhs, yet he transmitted only a small portion. He died in Shaʿbān of this year.

Ibn al-Jawzī (2) said: There is also a Muhammad b. Saʿdan al-Bazzāz who narrated from al-Qaʿnabi, but he is little-known. As for Muhammad b. Saʿdan the grammarian, he is well-known and died in 231 AH (3).

Ibn al-Athīr says in al-Kāmil (4): Among those who also died this year were:
• Yaʿqūb b. Sufyān b. Jawān (5), the imām from Fasa, who leaned toward Shiʿism;
• Yaʿqūb b. Yūsuf b. Maʿqil al-Umawī, their client, the father of Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Aṣamm; and
• ʿArīb, the singer in the time of al-Maʾmūn. It is said that she was the daughter of Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī.

As for Yaʿqūb b. Sufyān b. Jawān (6), he was Abū Yūsuf b. Abī Muʿāwiyah al-Fārisī al-Fasawī. He heard a vast number of ḥadith and narrated from more than a thousand reliable shaykhs (7), among them: Hishām b. ʿAmmār, Duḥaym, Abū al-Jamāhir, Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān—the Damascenes—Saʿīd b. Manṣūr, Abū ʿĀṣim, Makkī b. Ibrāhīm, Sulaymān b. Ḥarb, Muḥammad b. Kathīr, ʿUbayd Allah b. Mūsā, and al-Qaʿnabi.

Those who reported from him include al-Nasāʾī in his Sunan, Abū Bakr b. Abī Dāʾūd, al-Ḥasan b. Sufyān, Ibn Kharrāsh, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abū ʿAwānah al-Isfarāʾīnī, and many others. He authored the books al-Tārīkh (History), al-Maʿrifah (Recognition), and other useful works.

He traveled to distant lands in pursuit of ḥadith and remained away from his homeland for about thirty years.