ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Najdah said, “I heard Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh relate: ‘Ibn Abī Ḥusayn al-Makkī used to seat me close to him. The hadith scholars said to him, “We notice that you advance this young Syrian and prefer him to us!” He replied, “I have high hopes for him.”

One day they asked him about a report Shahr would narrate: ‘When food gathers four qualities it is complete.’ He mentioned three of them and forgot the fourth, then turned to me and asked, ‘How did I narrate it to you?’ I answered, ‘You told us on the authority of Shahr ibn Ḥawshab that he said: When food possesses four qualities it is complete—its beginning is lawful; Allah’s name is invoked over it when it is set down; many hands partake of it; and Allah is praised when it is removed.’ He then faced the people and said, ‘What do you think?’”

Sulaymān ibn Aḥmad al-Wāsiṭī reported from Yazīd ibn Hārūn: “I saw Shuʿbah in the company of Faraj ibn Faḍālah asking him about a ḥadith of Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh.”

Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf narrated from Abū al-Yamān: “Ismāʿīl’s house was next to mine. He would spend the night in worship; sometimes he recited, then paused, then returned and resumed from the point where he had stopped. I met him one day and said, ‘Uncle, I observed such-and-such in your recitation.’ He replied, ‘My son, what is your question?’ I said, ‘I simply wish to understand.’ He explained, ‘My son, I am praying. While reciting a passage a ḥadith relevant to a chapter I have compiled may come to mind, so I end the prayer, write it down in its proper place, then return to my prayer and start again from where I left off.’”

Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd transmitted from Yaḥyā al-Wuḥāẓī: “I never saw anyone of loftier spirit than Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh. Whenever we visited him at his farm he would deem nothing suitable for us but a young lamb and khabīṣ, a sweet dish made of dates and clarified butter.”

I heard him say, “I inherited four thousand dinars from my father, and I spent them all in the pursuit of knowledge.”