Abu Mikhnaf was born in c. 689.[4] His given name was Lut and his father was Yahya ibn Sa’id ibn Mikhnaf, who belonged to a noble clan of the powerful Azd tribe resident in Kufa.[4][5] His great-grandfather was Mikhnaf ibn Sulaym, a chieftain of the Azd and the commander of his tribesmen in the army of Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) at the Battle of Siffin in 657.[5][6] Mikhnaf’s son Muhammad, Abu Mikhnaf’s paternal granduncle, was seventeen-years-old at Siffin and his reports of the battle were recorded by Abu Mikhnaf.[7] He witnessed the mass Iraqi revolt led by Ibn al-Ash’ath against the Umayyad Caliphate in 700 and the toppling of the Umayyads by the Abbasids in 750.[5] He was a friend of Muhammad ibn Sa’id al-Kalbi and it was through the latter’s son Hisham ibn al-Kalbi that much of Abu Mikhnaf’s volumes were transmitted.[5] He died in 774/75.