This paper explores the historical corpus of al-Walid b. Muslim (d. 194 or 5/810), who in addition to being a major hadith scholar and the main collector and preserver of the corpus of Syrian scholarship (imam ahl al-Sham), was a particularly central node in the historical reports on the maghazi, the conquest of Syria and frontier warfare. While his reputation as a hadith scholar, especially as a transmitter of al-Awza’i’s tradition, was tainted by the accusation of tampering with his isnad chains (tadlis), Muslim scholars of the ilk of Abu Zur’a, al-Fasawi and much later Ibn Asakir, had no qualms about using him as one of their main sources, especially in reports on the conquests and wars in Syria. This paper avoids trying to reconstruct lost texts of an extinct Syrian historical school. There have been recent attempt among scholars to rebuild the “lost school” of Syrian history by imaginatively reconstructing books through the collection and collation of strands of reports from diverse sources. Here a different approach is taken. Rather than an historiographical reconstruction, this paper offers a study of a particular historical individual in the context of his life and his scholarship. The emphasis of this study is al-Walid b. Muslim as an individual and as a scholar. Having started as a slave ( min raqiq al-imara) belonging to the Umayyad household, al-Walid b. Muslim and his family moved to the household of Salih b. ‘Ali with the advent of the Abbasids. It is only during the Abbasid period that al-Walid b. Muslim was first manumitted by his Abbasid patron and he subsequently purchased his freedom from his Umayyad patron. The paper will explore the question of whether his life such as his status as an ex-slave, the fact that he lived under both Umayyad and ‘Abbasid patronage and his participation in maritime expeditions left a trace in his scholarship.