Among those who narrated from him were Khālid ibn Mirdās, Saʿīd ibn Yaʿqūb al-Ṭalqānī, Qutaybah ibn Saʿīd, Luwayn, ʿAlī ibn Ḥajar, and others. His retention, however, was weak.
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said, “His ḥadith resembles the reports of truthful people.” Al-Fallās judged him “acceptable.” Ibn Maʿīn said, “He is of no account.” Al-Nasāʾī pronounced him “weak.”
Ibn Ḥibbān remarked, “He is Ayyūb ibn Jābir ibn Sayyār ibn Ṭalq al-Ḥanafī. He transmits from Bilāl ibn al-Mundhir and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUṣm, but he errs so often that he falls outside the bounds of admissible evidence because of the abundance of his mistakes.”
I (the author) say: He lived on until roughly 180 AH.
49 – Ayyūb ibn ʿUtbah Abū Yaḥyā * (Q)
The jurist, chief judge of al-Yamāmah, Abū Yaḥyā.
He narrated from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, Qays ibn Ṭalq, Abū Bakr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥazm, Iyās ibn Salamah, and Yaḥyā ibn Abī Kathīr.
Those who transmitted from him include al-Aswad Shādhān, Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad, Aḥmad ibn Yūnus, Saʿdawayh, ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAlī, Ādam ibn Abī Iyās, Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Ẓafarī—the shaykh of Ibn Ṣāʿid—and others.