Scholars differed over the year of Ibn ʿAyyāsh’s birth and death.
• Muḥammad ibn ʿAwf, citing Yazīd ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, said that he was born in the year 102 AH (1).
• Saʿīd ibn ʿAmr al-Sakūnī narrated—through Baqiyyah—that Ismāʿīl was born in 105 AH, while he himself was born in 110 AH.
• Abū Zurʿah al-Dimashqī transmitted from Yazīd ibn ʿAbd Rabbih that he was born in 106 AH. I say: this is the soundest view, and so it was.
• Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal reported—ʿAmr ibn ʿUthmān al-Ḥimṣī relating from his father—that Ibn ʿUyaynah told me, “Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAyyāsh was born before me, in 106 AH, and I was born in 108 AH.” I responded, “Abū Muḥammad, you certainly started early—in seeking knowledge, I mean.”
• Abū al-Taqī al-Yazanī transmitted from Baqiyyah, who said, “Ismāʿīl was born in 108 AH, and I was born in 112 AH.”
As for Ismāʿīl’s death, it occurred in 181 AH, according to Yazīd ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Ḥaywah ibn Shurayḥ, Aḥmad, Ibn Muṣaffā, and several others. Ibn Muṣaffā added that it was on a Tuesday, eight days into Rabīʿ al-Awwal. Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Muḥammad al-Khawlani said it was on a Tuesday, six days into Jumādā. Ibn Saʿd, Khalīfah, Abū Ḥassān al-Ziyādī, Abū ʿUbayd, and Abū Muslim al-Wāqidī placed his death in 182 AH.
Neither al-Bukhārī nor Muslim recorded any of his narrations in their two Ṣaḥīḥ collections.