Imām Aḥmad said, “News reached me that he was brought before al-Amin. The moment al-Amin saw him, he lurched forward, crying out, ‘You son of an immoral woman! You presume to speak about the Qur’an?’

Ismāʿīl kept answering, ‘May Allah ransom me for you; it was the slip of a scholar.’

Aḥmad then remarked, ‘If Allah forgives him—meaning al-Amin—so be it.’ He also said, ‘And Ismāʿīl is reliable.’ (1)

Al-Faḍl ibn Ziyād said, ‘I asked, “Abū ʿAbd Allāh, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb says, ‘My heart can never love Ismāʿīl; I saw him in a dream and his face was black.’”’

Aḥmad replied, ‘May Allah grant ʿAbd al-Wahhāb well-being.’ He then added, ‘I stayed with Ismāʿīl for ten years, until people began to fault me for it.’ He shook his head, as though sighing with regret, and said, ‘Yet he was not fair in narration.’ (2)

I say: Ismāʿīl died in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the year 193 AH, at the age of eighty-three, and his hadith are cited in every Islamic collection.

He left several notable children, among them the judge of Damascus, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayyah, (3) a teacher of al-Nasāʾī—trustworthy and a ḥāfiẓ. His father died while he was still a boy, so he did not study under him; instead he heard hadith from Ibn Mahdī, Isḥāq al-Azraq, Yazīd ibn Hārūn, and others. Those who narrate from him include Makḥūl al-Bayrūtī, Ibn Jawṣāʾ, and a group of scholars.

He died