strokes of the switch hurt you?’

I replied, ‘My father sold his house and sent me so that I might gain honor by sitting with you and listening to you—yet you struck me!’

He said, ‘Write.’

So he dictated to me 17 hadiths, and I put to him the questions I had brought; he answered every one of them.

Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Harawī, reporting from Ṣāliḥ ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥāfiẓ, said:
‘I heard Hishām ibn ʿAmmār say:

“I entered upon Mālik and said to him, ‘Narrate to me.’

“He said, ‘Read.’

“I said, ‘No, rather narrate to me.’

“He said, ‘Read.’

“When I kept pressing him, he said, ‘Boy, come here, take this fellow and give him 15 strokes.’

“So he took me out and struck me 15 strokes with the switch, then brought me back and said, ‘I have beaten him.’

“I said, ‘Why have you wronged me? You struck me 15 strokes without any offense. I will not absolve you.’

“Mālik asked, ‘What is the expiation for that?’

“I answered, ‘Its expiation is that you narrate to me 15(1) hadiths.’

“So he narrated 15 hadiths to me.

“I then said, ‘Increase the beating and increase the narration!’

“Mālik laughed and said, ‘Be off.’”

Al-Khalīlī said: I heard ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Ṣāliḥ the Qurʾān-reciter say—al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Ṭūsī told us—I heard Muḥammad ibn Ṭarkhān say—I heard Hishām ibn ʿAmmār say:

“I headed for Mālik’s door and burst in without permission. He ordered a servant of his, who struck me 17 strokes—the sort administered by princes—and I was thrown out. I sat by his door weeping, not for the blows but out of dejection. A group gathered around me; I told them what had happened, they interceded for me, and he dictated to me 17 hadiths.”

Muḥammad ibn Khuraym al-Khuraymī said: I heard Hishām ibn ʿAmmār say in his sermon:

“Speak the truth, and the Truth will lodge you in the stations of the people of truth on the Day when judgment will be rendered by nothing but the truth.”