Ibn ʿAsākir relates that Iyās once heard the voice of a woman inside her house and remarked, “That woman is pregnant with a boy.” When she gave birth, it happened exactly as he had said. He was asked, “How did you know?” He replied, “I heard her voice and her breathing came with it, so I realised she was pregnant; and in her voice there was ṣaḥal (a peculiar rasp)⦗1⦘, so I knew it was a male child.

They further report that he later passed by a maktab (elementary Qur’an school). Seeing a boy there, he said, “If my insight is sound, this child is that woman’s son.” And indeed he was.

Mālik transmitted from al-Zuhrī, from Abū Bakr, that a man bore witness before Iyās. He asked him, “What is your name?” The man replied, “Abū al-ʿUnqar⦗2⦘.” Iyās refused to accept his testimony.

Sufyān al-Thawrī, on the authority of al-Aʿmash, said, “They brought me to Iyās, and I found a man who, whenever he finished one discussion, immediately began another.”

Iyās used to say, “Any man who does not recognise his own defect is a fool.” He was asked, “What is your defect?” He answered, “Talkativeness.”

They say that when his mother died he wept for her, and someone spoke to him about it. He said, “Two gates to Paradise were open for me; one of them has now been closed⦗3⦘.”

His father once said to him, “People ordinarily beget sons, whereas I have begotten a father.”

His companions would sit around him and write down his observations on physiognomy (firāsa). While they were with him one day, he noticed a man who came and sat on the dakkah (raised bench) of a shop⦗4⦘, scrutinising everyone who passed by. Iyās rose, looked at the man’s face, then returned and said to his companions, “He is a faqīh kuttāb—a jurist who teaches in a Qur’an school. A one-eyed slave boy has run away from him, and he is searching for him.” They approached the man, questioned him, and found the matter exactly as Iyās had stated. They asked Iyās, “How did you know that?” He replied, “When he sat on the shop’s bench, I realised he held some position of supervision. Then I observed that he was fit only for teaching in a kuttāb. When he began examining every passer-by, I understood he had lost a slave. Finally, when he stood and looked at that man’s face from the other side, I knew the boy was one-eyed.”

Ibn Khallikān recorded many such anecdotes in his biography of him⦗5⦘. Among them he said: “A man once testified before him in an orchard and said—”