When did Ibn Hazm begin to study law?

Biographies circulate a report that Ibn Hazm came late to the study of law, at twenty-six; the editors of al-Muhalla discuss it in their introduction, quoting modern scholars who reject it. ^{1 2 3}

Historians relate that Ibn Hazm attended a funeral and, on returning, went into the mosque and began to pray, after the afternoon prayer; he was told: "Sit down, this is not a time for prayer." He was then twenty-six. He left upset and asked the teacher who had raised him to direct him to the house of the jurist Abu Abd Allah ibn Dahhun, who set him to the Muwatta'; he read it and other books with him and others for about three years, then began to debate. ^{1 2} Another story has him objecting in a class to an answer on a legal question, being told "this science is not your trade", devoting himself to it, and returning months later to debate, saying: "I follow the truth and reason for myself, bound to no school." ¹

Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahra holds that this age does not fit the historical setting: he is known to have learned hadith from Ahmad ibn al-Jasur, and it is impossible that one who knew how to relate hadith did not know the greeting prayer of the mosque; he was also taken to the gatherings of great scholars, and no one would speak of a guide raising a man of twenty-six who had reached the rank of vizier. The reasonable reading, he says, is sixteen, with a copyist's slip. ^{2 3} Muhammad al-Manuni, in Shuyukh Ibn Hazm, took the same view with five arguments, and the editors note that al-Dhahabi in al-Ibar dates his first hearing to 399 AH, which would make him fifteen or sixteen. ³ The editors add that even if the report were true it would not detract from his standing. ⁴

The original sources of the report (al-Humaydi's account and those who passed it on) and al-Manuni's book itself have not yet been checked.