a single report.

Rajāʾ felt ashamed at that, and his mouth went dry.

Muḥammad said, “I heard Abū ʿAbd Allāh say: ‘When I entered Balkh, the hadith scholars there asked me to dictate for them one report from every teacher I had ever written from. So I dictated a thousand hadiths—one for each of a thousand men whose narrations I had recorded.’

Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥātim relates: Abū ʿAbd Allāh said, ‘Ishāq ibn Ibrāhīm was asked about a man who issued a divorce while forgetful. He fell silent for a long while, thinking, and the matter became unclear to him. So I remarked, “The Prophet ﷺ said, ‘Allah has pardoned my community for what they say to themselves so long as they neither act upon it nor voice it.’ (1) What is intended is that two of the three—either deed and heart, or speech and heart—must coincide; in this case his heart held no intention.’ Ishāq replied, ‘You have strengthened me,’ and he delivered his legal verdict accordingly. (2)’

Muḥammad also said, ‘I heard Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl say: “Whenever I selected reports from the book of Ismāʿīl ibn Abī Uways, he would copy those very hadiths and declare, ‘These are the narrations Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl chose from my collection.’ ” (3)

And Muḥammad said, ‘I heard al-Firabrī say: “I saw ʿAbd Allāh ibn Munīr writing from al-Bukhārī.” (4)