al-Ḥaddāʾ, Hishām ibn Ḥassān, ʿAwf al-Aʿrābī, Qurrāh ibn Khālid, Mahdī ibn Maymūn, Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim, Abū Hilāl Muḥammad ibn Sulaym, Yazīd ibn Ibrāhīm al-Tustarī, ʿUqbah ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Aṣamm, Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah, Abū Bakr Salmā al-Hudhalī, Ḥayyān ibn Ḥuṣayn, Shabīb ibn Shaybah, Sulaymān ibn al-Mughīrah, and Khulayḍ ibn Daʿlaj.
Khalid ibn Khidāsh said: Ḥammād narrated to us, from Anas ibn Sīrīn:
“My brother Muḥammad was born when two years of ʿUmar’s caliphate remained.”
Al-Ḥākim said: “That is exactly how I found it in my manuscript: ʿUmar.” Others, however, said: “ʿUthmān.”
I say: The second reading is the more likely. Had the first been correct, Ibn Sīrīn would have been the same age as al-Ḥasan, yet it is known that Muḥammad was several years younger. Still, evidence for the first view is the statement of ʿĀrim, quoting Ḥammād ibn Zayd: “Ibn Sīrīn lived a little over eighty years.”
Support for the second view comes from the report of Maysarah, from Muʿallā ibn Hilāl (1). He related from Yūnus ibn ʿUbayd, who said: “Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn died at the age of seventy-eight.”
Ḥammād ibn Zayd—through Hishām, from Ibn Sīrīn—reported:
“Abū al-Walīd took us on pilgrimage. When we passed through Medina, he admitted us to Zayd ibn Thābit. We were seven, the sons of Sīrīn. He said to him, ‘These are the sons of Sīrīn.’ Zayd replied, ‘These two share one mother, these two share another, these two share a third, and this one is from yet another mother.’ He did not err.”
Yahya was Muḥammad’s half-brother through their mother. It is also said that Maʿbad was his maternal brother instead (2).
Hishām ibn Ḥassān said: “Muḥammad met thirty Companions.”
ʿUmar ibn Shabbah narrated to us: Yūsuf ibn ʿAṭiyyah said: “I saw Ibn Sīrīn—short, of imposing….”