ten hadiths for him to put to al-Bukhari at the sitting. The people gathered, one of them volunteered, and he asked al-Bukhari about one hadith from his ten. Al-Bukhari answered, “I do not know it.”

He asked about another, and again he said, “I do not know it,” and so it continued until the man had finished his ten.

The jurists turned to one another saying, “The man has understood,” whereas those who did not grasp what was happening judged al-Bukhari incapable. A second questioner stepped forward and did exactly what the first had done, and al-Bukhari kept replying, “I do not know it.”

Then a third, and so on, until all ten men had questioned him, and he added nothing but, “I do not know it.”

When he realised they were finished, he turned to the first man and said, “As for your first hadith, it goes like this; the second, like this; the third, like this…”—until he completed the ten, restoring every text to its proper chain. He then did the same with the others.

The people thereupon acknowledged the perfection of his memory.

Whenever Ibn Ṣāʿid mentioned him he would say, “He is the butting ram.” (1)

Ghunjar reported: Mansūr ibn Isḥāq al-Asadī narrated to us; I heard ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Zāghūnī; I heard Yūsuf ibn Mūsā al-Marwarrūdhī say: “I was in Basra’s congregational mosque when I heard a caller announce, ‘People of knowledge, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī has arrived!’ Everyone set out in search of him, and I was with them. We saw a young man praying behind a pillar.

“When he finished the prayer they surrounded him and asked him to arrange a dictation session for them, and he agreed.

“The next day nearly such-and-such thousands assembled. He sat to dictate and said, ‘People of Basra, I am a young man and you have asked me to narrate to you. I shall narrate hadiths for you from scholars of your own city, and every one of you will benefit from them.’ (2)

“Then he began: ‘ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿUthmān ibn Jabalah narrated to us…’”