Bishr’s date of birth may have been 140/757, on the basis that he was around eighty years old when he died in 218/833 or 219/834. His place of birth is not known, although Bishr’s father was said to have been a Jew who worked as a fuller and dyer in Kūfa and Baghdad, a fact that later served as a pretext for many of Bishr’s opponents to attack him (al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 10/200, 202; al-Khaṭīb, 7/61, 67; al-Dārimī, 108).

Bishr studied law under the famous Ḥanafī jurist Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf (q.v.), who made him one of his close associates because of his pupil’s talent in fiq…