to his own house one must go for judgment and the greeting of peace.

He said: I heard Ibrāhīm al-Khawwāṣ, the mustamliʾ of Ṣadaqah, say, “I saw Abū Zurʿah sitting before Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl like a small boy, asking him about the hidden defects of hadith.” (1)

An account of his remarkable memory, vast knowledge, and keen intelligence

Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ghunjar relates in his History of Bukhārā: I heard Abū ʿAmr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad the Qur’an-reciter; I heard Mahīb ibn Sulaym; I heard Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad al-Qaṭṭān, the imam of Karmīniyyah, say: I heard Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl say, “I have written from one thousand shaykhs—and more. From each one of them I recorded ten thousand hadiths or even more. (2) There is not a single hadith in my possession except that I know its chain of transmission.” (3)

Ghunjar also said: Muḥammad ibn ʿImrān al-Jurjānī narrated to us; I heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-Bukhārī; I heard Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl say, “I met more than one thousand men—people of the Hijaz, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt—and I met them repeatedly: the people of Syria, Egypt, and the Jazīra twice; the people of Basra four times; and I spent six years in the Hijaz. I cannot count how many times I entered Kūfah and Baghdad along with the hadith scholars of Khurasan. Among them were al-Makkī ibn Ibrāhīm, Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā, Ibn Shuqayq, Qutaybah, Shihāb ibn Maʿmar; and in Syria al-Firyābī, Abū Mushir, Abū al-Mughīrah, Abū al-Yamān, and many others whose names he mentioned.”

Then he said, “I never saw a single one of them differ concerning this…”