Ayyūb, Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā, Aḥmad ibn al-Azhar, Saʿdān ibn Naṣr, Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā al-Madāʾinī, Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn al-Munādī, ʿAbd ibn Ḥumayd, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ayyūb al-Mukharramī, Yaḥyā ibn Jaʿfar al-Bīkandī, Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib, Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah, Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā al-Marwazī, ʿAmr ibn Rāfiʿ, ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus al-Ṭarsūsī, Hārūn ibn Ḥātim, Mūsā ibn Sahl al-Washshāʾ (1), al-Ḥasan ibn Mukram, al-Ḥārith ibn Abī Usāmah, and a great many others.
Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah said: I heard opinions about ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim that differed among our colleagues. Some reproached him for his plentiful mistakes and slips; others faulted him for persisting in them, refusing to retract what contradicted the consensus, and remaining obstinate in his errors. Yet others spoke of his poor memory, the confusion that befell him in some of what he related, his weak precision, and his neglect in correcting what the professional scribes had written for him. And there are some whose stories about him are even harsher than these. Nevertheless, may Allah have mercy on him, he was a man of religion, uprightness, and outstanding goodness, exceedingly cautious—while hadith has defects that can corrupt it (2).
Ibrāhīm ibn Hāshim told me: ʿAṭṭāb ibn Ziyād narrated to us, from Ibn al-Mubārak, who said: I asked ʿAbbād ibn al-ʿAwwām, “Abū Sahl! What is the matter with your companion?”—meaning ʿAlī ibn ʿĀṣim. He replied, “It is not denied that he did not (always) hear directly, but he was a man of means; the scribes used to write for him, and we believe he was afflicted through his books” (3).