—the Qur’an.’
I asked, ‘After I have committed it to memory, what will come of it?’
They answered, ‘You will sit in the mosque while children and adolescents recite to you. Before long someone will emerge among them who knows it better than you—or at least as well—and your prominence will vanish.’
I replied, ‘A person who seeks knowledge for the sake of prestige might worry about that; otherwise, the saying of the Chosen One—may Allah’s blessings be upon him—remains incontrovertible: “The best of you are those who learn the Qur’an and teach it.”⦗1⦘
Glory be to Allah! Is there any place nobler than the mosque? Is there any dissemination of knowledge that can rival teaching the Qur’an? By Allah, no! And are there students finer than boys who have not yet committed sins?’
I am inclined to think this entire tale is fabricated; its chain of transmission contains someone who is not reliable.
The continuation of the story states: He said, ‘Suppose I hear a hadith and write it down until no one on earth has a better mastery of it than I?’
They replied, ‘When you grow old and weak you will narrate, and these youngsters and boys will gather around you. You will not be safe from erring, they will accuse you of falsehood, and the shame will cling to you and to your descendants.’
I said, ‘I have no need for that.’
So now I maintain even more firmly that the anecdote is spurious, for Imam Abū Ḥanīfah did seek out hadith—and in great quantity—around the year 100 AH and thereafter. At that time children were not attending hadith sessions; that practice arose only after three hundred years. Back then it was the senior scholars who pursued hadith, and apart from the Qur’an the jurists had no other science, nor had any books of jurisprudence yet been compiled.
He then said, ‘I will study grammar.’
I asked, ‘If I master grammar and Arabic, what will…’