Once a scholar of Haleb who had come to Damascus heard of a prodigious child, Ahmad ibn Taimiyah, renowned for his marvellous retentive power. Coming to a tailor's shop near Ahmad's house he sat down there to wait for the child. After a short while, the tailor pointed out the boy sought by him. He summoned the boy and asked him to wipe off his tablet so that he could write on it. The boy handed over the clean tablet to the scholar who wrote 11 or 13 Traditions on it and asked the boy to read them once carefully. Now, the scholar took back the tablet and asked the boy to repeat what he had read. The boy repeated them all without a single mistake. The scholar got the tablet wiped off again and wrote thereon a few transmitting chains of the Traditions. The boy went through these and again repeated the whole thing. Astonished at the feat of the boy's memory he remarked: "If God wills him to live, he would be a genius without a peer in the whole world." - Abu Zahra, p.56 (cited from Al-'Uqud-ud-Durriyah), p.21.
Subject: Ibn Taimiyah's prodigious memory 
Sat Apr 03, 2010 6:29 am