His son Buhlūl ibn Isḥāq related: “Al-Mutawakkil summoned my father to Sāmarrāʾ, listened to him, then ordered that a pulpit be erected for him so that he could teach in the congregational mosque. He granted him an iqṭāʿ whose yearly revenue came to twelve thousand (1), and in addition bestowed on him a stipend of five thousand each year, which my father regularly received. He remained there until al-Mustaʿīn entered Baghdad; fearing that the Turks might overrun al-Anbār, my father set out for Baghdad without taking his books. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭāhir asked him to narrate, so in Baghdad he recited from memory fifty thousand hadiths, without making a single mistake in any of them (2).”

Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Azraq transmitted this story from his uncle Ismāʿīl ibn Yaʿqūb, from his uncle Buhlūl.

Abū Ṭālib Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn al-Buhlūl said: “I once compared notes with Ibn Ṣāʿid about what my grandfather had narrated in Baghdad. I told him, ‘Unays the amanuensis informed me that he delivered, from memory, forty thousand hadiths.’ Ibn Ṣāʿid replied, ‘Unays does not know what he is talking about; Isḥāq ibn al-Buhlūl recited from memory in Baghdad more than fifty thousand hadiths (3).’”

I say: Such, and only such, is true memorisation. Nowadays we are content with the name without the reality; were people in our time to meet someone who could relate a mere thousand hadiths with their chains from memory, they would be overwhelmed.

Isḥāq ibn Buhlūl, the ḥāfiẓ, died in al-Anbār in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of the year 252 AH, having nearly reached ninety years of age.

I read to ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ in Nablus; he told us that Ibn Qudāmah reported to us, who said: Ibn