and ninety (295 AH). I was in the presence of Abū Khalīfa al-Jumaḥī while he was threatening an agent, saying, “Will you do it again, you lout?” The man retorted, “May God not set you right!” He answered, “Rather, may God not set you right—now be off!”

Al-Ḥākim said: I observed that Abū ʿAlī the ḥāfiẓ greatly admired Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī and the precision of his transmission. He added: Nothing of Abū Yaʿlā’s narrations escaped him save a very small portion; and had he not been taken up with hearing the books of Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf from Bishr ibn al-Walīd al-Kindī, he would have managed to reach, in Basra, Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī and Sulaymān ibn Ḥarb.

Al-Ḥākim also said: Abū ʿAlī was a prodigy(1) of memorization—his notebooks were beyond anyone’s endurance, and none of our masters could match them. He travelled to Baghdad a second time in the year ten and three hundred (310 AH), by which time he had already authored and compiled works. He remained in Baghdad, and there was no one in the city whose memory excelled his except, perhaps, al-Jiʿābī; indeed, I heard Abū ʿAlī say, “I have not seen anyone in Baghdad with a better memory than al-Jiʿābī.”

I also heard Abū ʿAlī say: “Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ṣāʿid wrote more than a few hadiths from me during scholarly discussion, and Ibn Jawṣā took down a considerable collection from me in Damascus.”

The ḥadith master Abū Bakr ibn Abī Dāram said: “I never saw Ibn ʿUqda humble himself before any of the ḥuffāẓ the way he humbled himself before Abū ʿAlī al-Naysābūrī.”

Al-Ḥākim further related: I heard Abū ʿAlī say: “I met in Baghdad with Abū Aḥmad al-ʿAssāl, Abū Isḥāq ibn Ḥamzah, Abū Ṭālib ibn Naṣr, Abū Bakr al-Jiʿābī, and Abū Aḥmad al-Zaydī. They said to me, ‘Dictate for us a session from the hadith of Naysābūr.’ I declined, but they persisted until I dictated to them thirty hadiths; yet none responded…"