Hushaym when al-Wāqidī entered. Hushaym asked him about a certain chapter, “How much do you have memorized on it?”

Al-Wāqidī replied, “What you do not have, Abū Muʿāwiyah.”

Hushaym then cited five—or six—hadiths on the topic and said to al-Wāqidī, “And what do you have?”

Al-Wāqidī related thirty hadiths traced back to the Prophet ﷺ, to his Companions, and to the Successors. He added, “I questioned Mālik, I questioned Ibn Abī Dhʿīb, I questioned so-and-so, and so-and-so…” I noticed Hushaym’s face change color; when al-Wāqidī left, Hushaym remarked, “If he is a liar, there is no one like him on earth; and if he is truthful, there is no one like him on earth.”

Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Abbār said, “I heard Mujāhid ibn Mūsā say, ‘We have never written from anyone who had a better memory than al-Wāqidī.’” (1)

Ibrāhīm al-Harbī said that Sulaymān al-Shādhakūnī recounted:
“I wrote down a single sheet of al-Wāqidī’s narrations and slipped into it a hadith from Mālik that only Ibn Mahdī had transmitted from him. I then brought the sheet to al-Wāqidī. He narrated from it until he reached that hadith; at that point he left me and stood up. After a while he returned and said, ‘This hadith was requested by a man who bore malice toward Mālik, so I did not record it.’ He then proceeded to narrate it to me.” (2)

Muḥammad ibn Jarīr reported that Ibn Saʿd said:
“Al-Wāqidī used to say, ‘Everyone’s books outnumber what he has memorized, whereas my memorization outnumbers my books.’” (3)

Yaʿqūb ibn Shaybah said, “When al-Wāqidī moved from the western quarter, it is said that he transported his books on one hundred and twenty camel-loads.” (4)