be the end of the matter?’
They answered, ‘You will sit as a teacher, and the most you will ever earn is two—at best three—dinars.’
I said, ‘That, too, has no lasting benefit.’

I went on, ‘What if I turn to poetry so that no one can surpass me?’
They replied, ‘You will praise one man and he will shower you with gifts or robe you in finery; but if he withholds, you will lampoon him.’
I said, ‘I have no desire for that.’

I continued, ‘Suppose I engage in kalām (dialectical theology); what will its ultimate end be?’
They said, ‘Whoever occupies himself with kalām is never safe from its disgraceful entanglements: he will be branded a heretic and killed, or he will escape only to live on in ignominy.’
I exclaimed, ‘May Allah confound the one who fabricated this tale! Was kalām even in existence at that time?!’

He said, ‘So I asked, “If I study fiqh (jurisprudence)?”’
They replied, ‘You will be questioned, issue legal verdicts, and be sought for judgeship—even while you are still young.’
I said, ‘Of all the sciences none is more beneficial than this,’ so I applied myself to fiqh and learned it.

With this chain, reaching Ibn Kās: Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn Khāzim narrated to me; al-Walīd ibn Ḥammād narrated to us, from al-Ḥasan ibn Ziyād, from Zufar ibn al-Hudhayl, who said: I heard Abū Ḥanīfah say:

‘I used to delve into kalām until I reached a standing in which people pointed to me with their fingers. We would sit near the study-circle of Ḥammād ibn Abī Sulaymān. One day a woman came to me and said, “A man has a wife who is a bond-woman, and he wants to divorce her according to the sunnah; how many pronouncements should he make?” I did not know what to answer, so I told her to ask Ḥammād and then return and inform me.

She asked him, and he said, “He should pronounce one divorce while she is free of both menstruation and intercourse, then leave her until she menstruates twice; when she bathes after the second cycle, she becomes lawful to remarry.”

She came back and told me. I then declared, “I have no need for kalām.” I picked up my sandals and went to Ḥammād. I would listen to the questions put to him, commit his answers to memory, and when he repeated them the next day I would recall them while his other students faltered.

He said, “No one is to sit at the head of the circle opposite me except Abū Ḥanīfah.”

I remained with him for ten years. Then my soul began to crave leadership: I desired to leave him and set up a circle of my own, so one day I went out…"