al-Karīm al-Jazarī; and a host of others besides them.
Those who narrated from him include: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī; Wakiʿ; Yaḥyā ibn Ādam; Khalaf ibn Tamīm; al-Ḥasan ibn al-Rabīʿ al-Būrānī; Abū Tawbah al-Rabīʿ ibn Nāfiʿ; Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr; ʿĀṣim ibn Yūsuf; Qutaybah; Abū Bakr ibn Abī Shaybah, together with his brother ʿUthmān; Muḥammad ibn Salām al-Bīkandī; Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Muḥāribī; Hannād ibn al-Sarī; Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā; ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar ibn Abān; Aḥmad ibn Ḥawwās al-Ḥanafī; Khalaf ibn Hishām; Suwayd ibn Saʿīd; and others.
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī said, “He is more accurate than Sharīk.”
Aḥmad ibn Zuhayr reported from Yaḥyā that he said, “Reliable.”
ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd recounted: “I asked Yaḥyā, ‘Which do you prefer, Abū al-Aḥwaṣ or Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh?’ He replied, ‘There is hardly anything between them.’ ”
Aḥmad al-ʿIjlī said: “He was trustworthy, devoted to the Sunnah and to following it. When his house filled with ḥadith scholars he would say to his son Aḥwaṣ, ‘My son, stand up. If you see anyone in my house reviling a Companion, expel him; such people have no place with us.’ ”
The number of ḥadiths he transmitted was about four thousand.
He was the maternal uncle of the Qurʾān reciter Sulaym (1), the associate of Ḥamzah, and Abū al-Aḥwaṣ himself also recited the Qurʾān to Ḥamzah.