He was the first person in Medina to commit knowledge to writing, and that was before Mālik and the scholars of his circle. In learning he was a surging sea, yet his transmission was not as finely polished as one would wish.
Those who transmitted from him include: Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb—his own teacher—and Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Anṣārī, both of whom are classed among the Successors; then Shuʿbah, al-Thawrī, the two Ḥammāds, Abū ʿAwānah, Hushaym, Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ, Abū Shihāb al-Ḥannāṭ, Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā ibn Abī Zāʾidah, Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah, Mūsā ibn Aʿyan, Jarīr ibn Ḥāzim, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Ibn ʿAwn, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿīd ibn Abī Hind—both of whom were older than he—Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, Jarīr ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, Ḥafṣ ibn Ghiyāth, ʿAbdah ibn Sulaymān, Abū Khālid al-Aḥmar, Ibn Idrīs, Ibn Numayr, Ziyād al-Bakkāʾī, Salamah al-Aʿrash, Saʿdān ibn Yaḥyā, ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Sāmī, Muḥammad ibn Salamah al-Ḥarrānī, Ibn Fuḍayl, Ibn Abī ʿAdī, Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Wāsiṭī, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Yūnus ibn Bukayr, Yaʿlā ibn ʿUbayd and his brother Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Maghrāʾ, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Umawī, Abū Tumaylah Yaḥyā ibn Wāḍiḥ, Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Wahbī, and multitudes besides them whose complete enumeration would be difficult and whose counting would be burdensome.
Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī said: “Yasār, the client of Qays ibn Makhramah, was from the captives of ʿAyn al-Tamr; he was the first of the Iraqi captives to enter Medina.”
Salamah ibn al-Faḍl narrated from Abū Isḥāq who said: “I saw Anas ibn Mālik wearing a black turban while the boys were running about saying, ‘This is a man from the Companions of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—he will not die until he meets the Antichrist.’” (1)
Muḥammad ibn Ḥumayd narrated from Jarīr who said: “I saw Ibn Isḥāq dyeing his hair black.”
Al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ghallābī said: “I asked Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn about Ibn Isḥāq and he replied, ‘He was reliable and his hadiths were good.’”
I said, “But people claim that he met Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib?”