and, because they are so hard to reach and so inimitable in their pattern, he alone outstripped his peers in the precision with which he probed them, and became famous among his contemporaries for elucidating their intent. In the introduction to Fath al-Bārī he discusses the matter at length, noting that some headings correspond exactly to the tradition he cites beneath them. At times the heading uses the very wording of the hadith, or part of it, or its meaning. He frequently phrases a heading as a question whenever he is not prepared to decide between two possibilities. Often he crafts a heading whose aim is not apparent without careful reflection—such as his chapter, “The statement of a man: ‘We have not prayed,’” for his purpose there is to refute those who deemed that wording reprehensible. Many times he employs a heading that merely alludes to the sense of a hadith that does not satisfy his own conditions, or he quotes the text of that hadith outright in the heading and then, within the chapter, brings material that conveys its meaning—sometimes plainly, sometimes by a subtle indication. On occasion he is content with a heading that reproduces the wording of a hadith that does not meet his criterion of authenticity, adding alongside it a Companion-report or a Qur’anic verse, as though to say, “Nothing in this topic meets my conditions.” For these and other reasons a number of scholars became well known for declaring: “Al-Bukhārī’s fiqh is found in his chapter headings.”