Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan

Yahya ibn Sa'id ibn Farrukh al-Qattan al-Ahwal, Abu Sa'id (d. 198 AH), was a Basran, said to have been a client of the Banu Tamim. He was among the imams of hadith and of the criticism and assessment of narrators (al-jarh wa-l-ta'dil) in his age. He heard from al-A'mash, Sufyan al-Thawri, Shu'ba, Malik, Hammad ibn Salama, Thabit al-Bunani, Mutarrif al-Warraq and others. He reported of himself that he kept company with Shu'ba for twenty years, and so he was the most reliable of people in Shu'ba's transmission and the most precise about his hadith. ¹

Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, Affan ibn Muslim, Ali ibn al-Madini, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Yahya ibn Ma'in, Abu Khaythama (may God be pleased with him), Qutayba ibn Sa'id, Uthman ibn Abi Shayba and other hadith imams transmitted from him. He was extremely cautious in transmission, to the point that some people faulted him for his lengthy discussion of the defects (ilal) of narrators and of the weak ones. ¹

There were exchanges of hadith between him and Sufyan al-Thawri, in which each corrected the other; among them are discussions about a hadith of Aisha and others. He died in Muharram in the year 198. ¹