still a small child, and he was raised in his mother’s care. Allah inspired him to memorize ḥadīth while he was still in the maktab, and by the age of sixteen he had read the celebrated works to the point that people said he could recite from memory, while yet a boy, seventy thousand ḥadīth in uninterrupted succession.

At eighteen he performed the ḥajj, remained in Mecca to seek ḥadīth there, and then traveled on to every land whose teachers he was able (1) to reach, writing from more than one thousand shaykhs.

Countless people transmitted from him. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (2) relates from al-Firabrī (3) that he said: “Roughly ninety (4) thousand persons heard the Ṣaḥīḥ from al-Bukhārī along with me, and none of them remains alive except me.”

The Ṣaḥīḥ has been transmitted (5) from al-Bukhārī through al-Firabrī—the recension people use today—as well as through Ḥammād ibn Shākir, Ibrāhīm ibn Maʿqil, and Ṭāhir ibn Muḥammad ibn Makhlad.

The last person to narrate from him was Abū Ṭalḥa Manṣūr ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Bazdawī (6) an-Nasafī, who died in 329 AH; al-Amīr Abū Naṣr ibn Mākūlā (7) declared him reliable.

Among those who narrated from al-Bukhārī were Muslim—in works other than the Ṣaḥīḥ—who regarded himself as his student and held him in great esteem; al-Tirmidhī in his Jāmiʿ; and al-Nasāʾī in his Sunan, according to some authorities (8).

He entered Baghdad eight times, and on each visit he met Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, who would urge him to remain in Baghdad and reproach him for living in Khurāsān (9).

During the night he would awaken, strike a light, record the passing thought or benefit, extinguish the lamp, and then rise again; this might occur nearly twenty times (10) in a single night.

He lost his eyesight when he was still young, whereupon his mother saw Abraham, the Close Friend—peace be upon him—in a dream, and he said: “O woman!”