*A Student's Revenge*
There's a famous exchange between the Imam Abū Ḥanīfah (d. 150/767) and his illustrious student Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798, later chief judge/qāḍī al-quḍāh for the Abbasid caliphs) that serves as a great warning to overly arrogant teachers.
There's a famous exchange between the Imam Abū Ḥanīfah (d. 150/767) and his illustrious student Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798, later chief judge/qāḍī al-quḍāh for the Abbasid caliphs) that serves as a great warning to overly arrogant teachers.
Unlike Abū Ḥanīfah—who was mostly interested in legal knowledge and jurisprudence—his star student Abū Yūsuf had broader interests. But one day his study of Ibn Isḥāq’s history of the Prophet made him late to Abū Ḥanīfah’s majlis, causing his teacher to take offense.
Abū Ḥanīfah chided him for filling his head with what he deemed to be useless knowledge, interrogating him, "So Abu Yusuf, who carried the banner of Goliath into battle?!" (I'm sure the joke was funnier back then.)
Abū Yūsuf allegedly quipped back, “If you don’t stop that, by God, I’ll ask you in front of everyone here whether the Battle of Badr or the Battle of Uḥud came first! And I know that you don’t know which of one was earliest!” Abu Hanifah left him alone after that.
Here’s the original Arabic version from al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī (although it appears in many sources): 
