Ya'qub ibn Shayba

Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Shayba al-Sadusi — Basran, client of Shaddad ibn Humayyan al-Sadusi — settled at Baghdad, at Sarr Man Ra'a, and related there. He heard 'Ali ibn 'Asim, Yazid ibn Harun, Rawh ibn 'Ubada, 'Affan ibn Muslim, Mu'alla ibn Mansur, Muhammad ibn 'Abd Allah al-Ansari, Abu'l-Nadr Hashim ibn al-Qasim, Aswad ibn 'Amir, Abu Na'im, Qabisa ibn 'Uqba, Yahya ibn Abi Bakr, Husayn al-Marwazi, Muslim ibn Ibrahim, Abu'l-Walid al-Tayalisi, Muhammad ibn Kathir, Abu Salama al-Tabudhaki, Abu Ahmad al-Zubayri and a great many others; his grandson Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Ya'qub and Yusuf ibn Ya'qub ibn Ishaq ibn al-Bahlul transmitted from him, and he was reliable. ¹

He composed a defective-chain Musnad he never finished — it was said: were his book but ruled on the palm he'd deserve to have it written — and in his house were forty quilts readied for the copyists who stayed the night transcribing the Musnad; nearly ten thousand dinars went into it. He was among the Baghdadi jurists on Malik's madhhab, one of the senior companions of Ahmad ibn al-Mu'adhdhal and al-Harith ibn Miskin, and held the waqf position on the Qur'an. When al-Mutawakkil asked Ahmad ibn Hanbal who should take the judgeship and asked about Ya'qub ibn Shayba, he said: an innovator, a man of whim — said to be because he held the waqf on the Qur'an. ¹