into a separate fascicle; and, when set beside them, the Ḥadīth of the Bird is as lofty as the sky. All the same, it is a useful work—I have produced an abridgment of it—yet it still needs further labor and refinement (1).

Ibn Ṭāhir said: I heard Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Samarqandī say:

“I was informed that when al-Ḥākim’s Mustadrak was mentioned in the presence of al-Dāraqutnī, he remarked, ‘Yes indeed—he even claims the Ḥadīth of the Bird meets their standards!’ When this reached al-Ḥākim, he removed that report from the book.” (2)

I say: This story is disconnected, and in fact it never happened, for al-Ḥākim only compiled the Mustadrak toward the end of his life, some time after al-Dāraqutnī had died. The Ḥadīth of the Bird is still in the work; it was never taken out. It also appears in al-Tirmidhī’s Jāmiʿ.

Ibn Ṭāhir further said: “I personally saw al-Ḥākim’s own collection devoted to the Ḥadīth of the Bird, written in his own hand in a large fascicle, and I copied it out in astonishment.” (3)

Al-Ḥākim says in his Tārīkh: “One day we were discussing what Sulaymān al-Taymī transmitted from Anas. As I was moving through the entry—Abū ʿAlī the ḥāfiẓ and a group of shaykhs being present—I came to the ḥadīth, ‘The fornicator does not commit fornication while he is a believer.’ At that, some of them turned on me. Abū ʿAlī said, ‘Do not do that! Neither you nor we have ever seen anyone of his age like him, and I say: whenever I look at him I see a thousand…’”