— Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hafs reported to us; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Sulayman reported to us; Khalaf ibn Muhammad narrated to us; Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Fadl al-Balkhi said: “I heard my father say, ‘Muhammad ibn Ismaʿil’s two eyes lost their sight when he was still a child. His mother then saw Abraham, the Close Friend, in a dream, and he said to her, “O woman, Allah has restored your son’s sight because of the abundance of your weeping—or, the abundance of your supplication” – al-Balkhi was unsure which of the two he said – “and when morning came Allah had indeed returned his eyesight.”’ ” (1)

With the same chain down to Muhammad ibn Abi Hatim, he said: I asked Abu ʿAbd Allah, “How did your pursuit of knowledge begin?” He replied, “While I was still in the kuttab (elementary Qur’an school) I was inspired to memorize hadith.” I asked, “How old were you?” He said, “Ten years old, or a little less. After I turned ten I left the kuttab and began attending the lessons of al-Dakhili and others. One day, as he was reading to the people, he cited: ‘Sufyan, from Abu al-Zubayr, from Ibrahim.’ I said to him, ‘Abu al-Zubayr never transmitted from Ibrahim.’ He rebuked me, so I said, ‘Go back to the original.’ He went inside, looked at it, then came out and asked, ‘Well, lad, how does it read?’ I said, ‘It is al-Zubayr ibn ʿAdi, from Ibrahim.’ He took the pen from me, corrected his book, and said, ‘You are right.’

Someone asked al-Bukhari, ‘How old were you when you corrected him?’ He replied, ‘Eleven years old. When I reached sixteen, I had already memorized the books of Ibn al-Mubarak and Wakiʿ and had mastered the discourse of those scholars.’ (2)

He continued: “After that I set out with my mother and my brother Ahmad to Mecca. Once I had performed the pilgrimage my brother returned home with her, but I stayed behind to seek hadith.” (3)