and steadfast adherence to it, marked by majesty and dignified composure.

Among those who transmitted ḥadith from him were Ibn Isḥāq, Sufyān al-Thawrī, and al-Aʿmash—even though they were his own teachers—as well as al-Layth ibn Saʿd, Abyad ibn al-Agharr al-Minqarī, Mūsā ibn Aʿyan, and a group of others who all passed away before he did. Other narrators included Baqiyyah ibn al-Walīd, Ibn al-Mubārak, al-Walīd ibn Muslim, Faraj ibn Faḍālah, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad, Ḥaywah ibn Shurayḥ, Abū al-Yamān, Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr, Abū al-Jamāhir al-Kafrasūsī, Marwān ibn Muḥammad, al-Haytham ibn Khārijah, al-Ḥakam ibn Mūsā, Abū Mushir, ʿUthmān ibn Abī Shaybah and his brother Abū Bakr, Muḥammad ibn Salām al-Bīkandī, Abū ʿUbayd, Hannād ibn al-Sarī, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd al-Muḥāribī, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿArafah, ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd al-Ḥimṣī, Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Tamīmī, and many others besides.

Ibn Maʿīn said, “Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh was a freedman of the tribe of ʿAns.”

Abū Khuthaymah said, “He was cross-eyed.”

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Muqaddamī said, “He was blue-eyed.”

Al-Khaṭīb remarked, “He came to Baghdad during the caliphate of al-Manṣūr, who appointed him keeper of the garment treasury, and he narrated extensively in Baghdad.”

Muḥammad ibn Muhājir related: My brother ʿAmr said to me, “You do not know how to ask questions; why do you not put to me the question asked by that blue-eyed man? No one has ever asked me a better question than he did.”

I replied, “How could I match him, when he is a jurist—meaning Ismāʿīl?”

In another recension transmitted by Abū Mushir from Muḥammad, my brother said, “Why do you not ask me the question posed by that red-complexioned man from Ḥimṣ?”