the weak narrators; he related it from al-Zuhrī with a disconnected chain (mursal).

Abū Mūsā said: Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Malik narrated to us, from Saʿd b. ʿAlī al-Zanjānī, who heard Abū Naṣr al-Wāʾilī say:

“When Abū al-Faḍl al-Hamadhānī arrived in Nīshāpūr, the people championed him and nicknamed him Badīʿ al-Zamān (‘the Wonder of the Age’). He became full of himself, for he could memorise a hundred lines of verse after hearing them once and then recite them in reverse order, from the last line back to the first. He therefore objected when people said, ‘So-and-so is a ḥāfiẓ in hadith,’ and exclaimed:

‘And is the memorisation of hadith even something to talk about?!’

Al-Ḥākim Ibn al-Bayyiʿ heard of this, so he sent him a fascicle and granted him one week to memorise it ⦗1⦘. After the week Abū al-Faḍl returned the fascicle and said, ‘Who could possibly memorise this? Muḥammad son of So-and-so, Jaʿfar son of So-and-so, from So-and-so—different names and varying wordings!’

Al-Ḥākim replied, ‘Know your own place, and realise that this kind of memorisation is harder than what you excel in ⦗2⦘.’

Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī also reported that al-Ḥākim once entered the public bath, bathed, came out and said, ‘Ah!’ His soul was taken while he was still wrapped in his waist-cloth, before he had put on his shirt. He was buried after the ʿAṣr prayer on Wednesday, and the judge Abū Bakr al-Ḥīrī led the funeral prayer over him ⦗3⦘.

Al-Ḥasan b. Ashʿath al-Qurashī said: ‘I saw al-Ḥākim in a dream, mounted on a horse in handsome form, saying, “Deliverance!” I asked him, “O Ḥākim, deliverance in what?” He replied, “In writing hadith ⦗4⦘.”’