in both retention and sheer quantity above all of their teachers, and he would say, “Abū Kurayb possessed three hundred thousand ḥadīths in Kūfah.”

Muḥammad ibn Ḥāmid ibn Idrīs al-Bukhārī related, on the authority of Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad Jazara:

“Dryness once afflicted Abū Kurayb’s scalp, so a physician was brought in. The doctor said, ‘His head should be coated with falūdhaj (a sweet pudding).’ They did so, whereupon Abū Kurayb took some of it from his head, put it into his mouth, and remarked, ‘My stomach needs it more than my head.’”

I say: During one of his journeys he reached Damascus. He himself said, “I came to Yaḥyā ibn Ḥamzah and found him wearing the black attire of judges (1), so I did not hear anything from him, even though I had travelled intending to go on to Ifrīqiyyah.”

Al-Muṭayyīn said: “Abū Kurayb instructed in his will that his books be buried, and so they were.”

I add: More than one ḥāfiẓ has dealt with his books by burying, washing, or burning them, fearing that a transmitter of scant piety might seize them, tamper with them, add to them, and have the alteration attributed to the ḥāfiẓ; or because his originals contained cut-off or weak reports that he never transmitted. He had only selected from his sources what he actually narrated, and whatever remained he no longer wanted, seeing no solution but destroying it. For this reason, and others like it, he—may Allah have mercy on him—buried his books.

Al-Bukhārī and others said: “Abū Kurayb died on Tuesday, with four days remaining of Jumādā al-Ākhirah, in the year 248 AH.”

Al-Muṭayyīn said: “He died with three days remaining of Jumādā al-Ūlā.”

Whoever claims that he died in 247 AH is mistaken.

He lived for eighty-seven years.

Abū al-Maʿālī al-Abarqūhī informed us; al-Fatḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Salām informed us; Hibat—