Abū Isḥāq the one who was speaking?”
He answered, “No, he remained silent; the affair was completely in the hands of Ibn Abī Duʾād.”

Abū ʿAbdillāh then said, “There was no one among them more tender toward me than Abū Isḥāq, even though not one of them was rightly guided.”

He continued, “I heard Abū ʿAbdillāh say: When I declared, ‘I will not speak except on the basis of the Book or the Sunnah,’ the blind Shāfiʿī cited the report of ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn: ‘Allah created the dhikr (remembrance).’

“I said to him, ‘That is a mistake; Sufyān al-Thawrī and Abū Muʿāwiya record it correctly, but Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd slipped in it, and I have forbidden him to relate it.’

“Abū Isḥāq remarked, ‘I consider him a jurist.’ ”

Abū ʿAmr—ʿUthmān ibn ʿUmar—told me: “Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn narrated to us—Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Warrāq from Mosul also wrote to me—saying: Bakr ibn Muḥammad related from his father, from Abū ʿAbdillāh:

‘A great crowd gathered around me while I sat among them like a prisoner, the shackles weighing me down. They were all clamoring and laughing: one would snatch a verse, another would bring a hadith, while the chief kept hushing them.

‘This man would say something, that one would say something, and yet another would say something. Then one of them asked me, “Is it not reported from Abū al-Silīl, from ʿAbdullāh ibn Rabāḥ, from Ubayy?”

‘I replied, “And how would you know who Abū al-Silīl is, or ʿAbdullāh ibn Rabāḥ? What concern is this of yours?” So he fell silent.

‘Another said to me, “Allah has not created in heaven or on earth anything greater than Āyat al-Kursī.”

‘I answered, “That is only a figure of speech,” and he, too, fell silent.’ ”