with us Ibn Diḥya, and he would say, “I have memorized Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim and Sunan al-Tirmidhī.” He continued: “So I selected five ḥadiths from al-Tirmidhī, five from the Musnad, and five outright fabrications, placed them together in a small booklet, then read to him one ḥadith taken from al-Tirmidhī. He replied, ‘That is not authentic.’ I read him another; he said, ‘I do not know it.’ In fact, he failed to recognize a single one of them.”

Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī said: “Although Ibn Diḥya possessed wide knowledge of ḥadith and had memorized a great deal, he was suspected of reckless citation. This report reached the sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil, who ordered him to compose some annotations on Kitāb al-Shihāb. Ibn Diḥya wrote a treatise discussing its traditions and their chains of transmission. After al-Kāmil examined it, he set it aside for a few days and then said, ‘That booklet has been lost; prepare another like it for me.’ Ibn Diḥya obliged, but the second work contradicted the first. The sultan thus realized that the rumours about him were true; his standing declined, he was removed from the Dār al-Ḥadīth he had recently founded, and his brother Abū ʿAmr was appointed in his place (1).”

I read, in Ibn Masdī’s own hand in his Muʿjam: “Ibn Diḥya’s father was a merchant known as al-Kalbī—spelled with the letter that lies between faʾ and bāʾ; it is the name of a locality in Dāniyah. At first Abū al-Khaṭṭāb used to write ‘al-Kalbī’ so as to denote both place and lineage, but he was commonly called Ibn al-Jumayyil, the diminutive of ‘jamal’ (camel).”

He went on: “Abū al-Khaṭṭāb was the foremost scholar of his era, and his first appointment was as qāḍī of Dāniyah.”

I add: Ibn Masdī also stated that Ibn Diḥya was dismissed because he castrated one of his slaves; the king became enraged, and Ibn Diḥya fled.

Ibn Masdī’s exact wording is: “There was a slave named …”