Scholars traveled hundreds of miles to hear recitation chains only one living man held

Evidence

In the Iranian town of Nishapur, to give an example, those who wished to study and teach the Sahih of Bukhari, one of the most authoritative collections of the sayings of the Prophet, ‘travelled some two hundred miles to the town of Kushmaihan near Marv where there was a man who recited the text from a copy made from a copy made from Bukhari’s own dictation’. … Seventy-five years after the death of his master al-Kushmaihani, Abu Sahl Muhammad al-Hafsi found himself … to be the only man alive who had studied under him. … He was therefore brought over two hundred miles to Nishapur, and honoured personally by the ruler. ‘Then in the Nizamiya madrasa he gave a class, in which he dictated the Sahih to a great crowd.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 476

Categorization

• CANDY: A man being transported over two hundred miles and honored by a ruler solely because he was the last living student of a teacher two generations back is a delightful concrete image.