I spent the whole night pondering, turning the matter over again and again. When I examined the narrators from the Jazīrah who reported from al-Zuhrī, I remembered Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥafṣah—and his kunyah, as it turns out, is Abū Salamah. When morning came, I attended his session and said nothing until I had read to him about one hundred hadiths.

He asked, “Have you reflected on what took place?”

I replied, “Yes; it is Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥafṣah.”

He was astonished and said to me, “Have you looked at the report of Sufyān that Abū ʿAmr al-Baḥīrī relates?”

I said, “No,” and I explained to him the approach I had taken. He was taken aback and commended me. I continued to question him, and he remarked, “Whenever I engage in discussion (1) nowadays on any subject, I have to consult the texts first, because of my advanced age.”

Yet in everything that was put before him I found him an ocean.

He said to me, “Know that in Khurasan and Transoxiana every town has a history compiled by one of its scholars, but I found that despite the multitude of scholars in Nishapur, they had produced nothing of the sort. That moved me to compose The History of the People of Nishapur (2); I examined it closely, and to my knowledge no one had preceded me in this (3). I also wrote, for Abū ʿAlī ibn Saymajūr, a book on the days of the Prophet ﷺ, his wives, and his hadiths, which I entitled The Garland (al-Iklīl). I have never seen—