He was born in one of the years of the 120s AH.
He transmitted from Ibn ʿAwn, Sulaymān al-Taymī, Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, Qurra ibn Khālid, Misʿar ibn Kidām, ʿUmar ibn Abī Zāʾida, Shuʿba, Nāfiʿ ibn Abī Nuʿaym—before whom he also recited—Bakkār ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Abī Bakrah, Salama ibn Bilāl, Shabīb ibn Shayba, and many others, although his transmissions with fully supported chains are few.
Those who narrated from him include Abū ʿUbayd, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī, Salama ibn ʿĀṣim, Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā al-Minqarī, ʿUmar ibn Shabba, Abū al-Faḍl al-Riyāshī, Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī, Naṣr ibn ʿAlī, his nephew ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Aṣmaʿī, Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd Abū ʿAṣīda, Bishr ibn Mūsā, al-Kudaymī, Abū al-ʿAynāʾ, Abū Muslim al-Kajjī, and many others besides.
ʿAbbās al-Dūrī relates—through Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn—from al-Aṣmaʿī, who said, “Mālik ibn Anas heard from me.”(1)
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal likewise spoke well of al-Aṣmaʿī concerning the Sunnah.(2)
Al-Aṣmaʿī said: Shuʿba once told me, “If you could make the time, I would come to you.”(3)
Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī said: “I went in to visit al-Aṣmaʿī when he was ill, and there was a large trunk….”