Statement by Abu As‘ad Abdur Rahman bin Muhammad Idrisi:

Abu ‘Isa al-Tirmidhi was proverbial in memorization of Hadith. One such incident is narrated by his teacher Abu Bakr Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Harith al-Marwazi. He reports that he heard Ahmad bin Abdullah bin Dawud say: I heard Imam Tirmidhi say, “Once I was on the way to Makkah and had written two booklets of Hadith from a certain Shaykh. When I met the Shaykh, I asked to hear Hadith from him, thinking I had those two booklets with me. The Shaykh agreed to recite the Hadith, but when I checked, I found I was only holding two blank notebooks. The Shaykh began reciting the Hadith and noticed I was holding blank pages. He said, ‘Are you not ashamed to act this way in front of me?’ I explained the situation and said, ‘I have memorized all the Hadith.’ He said, ‘Then recite them.’ I recited the Hadith to him, but he didn’t believe me and asked, ‘Did you memorize these before coming?’ I asked him to narrate more Hadith. He then recited forty Hadith and told me to repeat them. I recited them back without a single letter's difference. The Shaykh then said, ‘I have never seen anyone like you.’” [Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, al-Siyar 13/273]