For holding this disputation...

For holding this disputation, Mamun arranged a grand function and gave wide publicity to it. Everybody was eager to witness a seemingly strange and unequal competition in which there was an eight-year-old child on one side and, on the other, a veteran and renowned chief justice of the regime. The result was that a mammoth gathering turned up to witness the spectacle.

Historians have stated that besides the nobles of the court and other prestigious personalities, nine hundred chairs were reserved only for the outstanding scholars and men o learning. There is nothing surprising in this because this was the time when the Abbasid regime was in the prime of its glory and, and…