to ask al-Baghlānī—meaning Qutaybah—to bring out the ḥadiths he had written down from Ibn ʿUyaynah. He replied, “Since the day I recorded them I have never shown them to anyone. If you will do this seeking God’s reward, look through them, and mark whatever is mistaken, I will oblige; otherwise I will not teach them, for I cannot be sure that some error has not crept in. The gatherings were extremely crowded and the people used to compare their notebooks, each one correcting the other, whereas I left my copy just as it was.”
Al-Bukhārī was pleased and said, “You have been granted success.”

Thereafter he would go to him every morning after the dawn prayer, examine the notebook until it was time for his session, and mark the errors he found.

I once heard al-Bukhārī refute Abū Rajāʾ over a ḥadith. Abū Rajāʾ said, “Abū ʿAbdallāh, this is among the material the people of Baghdad wrote down from me; it bears the mark of Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, so I cannot change it.”

Abū ʿAbdallāh replied, “They only copied that from you because you were merely passing through, whereas I have written this, exactly as I am telling you, from several transmitters: from Yaḥyā ibn Bukayr, Ibn Abī Maryam, and al-Layth’s scribe from al-Layth himself.” Abū Rajāʾ backed down, grasped his point, and submitted.

Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf said, “In Balkh, Zakariyyā al-Luʾluʾī and al-Ḥasan ibn Shujāʿ used to walk with Abū ʿAbdallāh to the senior shaykhs out of reverence and honor for him.”

Ḥāshid ibn Ismāʿīl said, “I saw Isḥāq ibn Rāhūyah seated on the couch with Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl beside him. Isḥāq was saying, ‘ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us…’ until he came to a ḥadith that Muḥammad rejected, whereupon Isḥāq retracted to Muḥammad’s view. (1)"