Al-Hasan ibn ʿAli al-Qalansī related to us, ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUmar related to us, ʿAbd al-Awwal ibn ʿĪsā related to us, Abu Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allah ibn Muhammad—the ḥāfiẓ—related to us, Muhammad ibn Aḥmad al-Jārūdī related to us, Abu Isḥāq al-Qarrāb (1) related to us, Abu Yaḥyā al-Sājī narrated to us, Abu Dāwūd al-Sijzī narrated to us, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal narrated to us, al-Shāfiʿī narrated to us, Mālik narrated to us, from Ibn ʿAjlān, from his father, who said:
“When the scholar fails to say, ‘I do not know,’ his vital spots are struck.” (2)
Most of the transmitters in this chain constitute an unbroken succession of hadith masters, from Abu Ismāʿīl down to ʿAjlān—may Allah have mercy on them.
Using the same chain back to Abu Ismāʿīl, he said: Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm informed us; Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah informed us; Abu al-Walīd Ḥassān ibn Muhammad, the jurist, informed us; Ibrāhīm ibn Muhammad al-Kūfī—who occupied an eminent place in Islam—said:
“I saw al-Shāfiʿī in Mecca issuing legal rulings to the people, and I saw Aḥmad and Isḥāq present.
Al-Shāfiʿī then said, ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Did ʿAqīl leave us any house at all?”’
Isḥāq replied, ‘Yazīd narrated to us from al-Ḥasan, and Abu Nuʿaym and ʿAbdah narrated to us from Sufyān, from Manṣūr, from Ibrāhīm: that the two of them did not hold that view; and ʿAtāʾ and Ṭāwūs likewise did not hold that view.’
Al-Shāfiʿī asked, ‘Who is this?’
He was told, ‘Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḥanẓalī, Ibn Rāhawayh.’
Al-Shāfiʿī said, ‘Are you the man the people of Khurasan claim is their jurist? How much I would prefer someone else to be in…’