My study undertakes a thick history of the function of hand-written media in the reading culture of al-Bukhari, a compilation of reports attributed to Muhammad that is the text most revered by the Sunni community after the Qur’an. Drawing on manuscript materials, chronicles, biographical dictionaries and commentaries from the Mamluk period (13th- and 15th-century Egypt and the Levant) I first show that manuscript making was deeply embedded in the culture of live performance and the politics of a competitive audience. In rich detail, these sources shine a light on how hand-written volumes of commentary on al-Bukhari were painstakingly outlined, drafted, reviewed and edited aloud in the presence of an easily divided community of students, rivals and patrons, typically over the course of several decades. In theory, when explicating and transmitting compilations of prophetic reports, commentators accorded a limited authority to texts recorded in writing relative to texts preserved through memory and recitation. In constructing the most “authoritative” reading of al-Bukhari, commentators such as Ibn Rushayd al-Sabti (d. 1321) and Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (d. 1449) claimed to draw on their memories of traditions of oral recitation rather than manuscript sources. This emphasis on orality and memory arose, in part, out of a concern with a practice made possible with the medium of the manuscript: reading on one’s own (qira’a bi-nafsihi). In the view of these commentators, reading a written text on one’s own would be inadequate if done without also reading the document aloud in the presence of a master qualified to bring determinacy to potential ambiguities and deficiencies latent in the manuscript. In practice, however, commentators frequently consulted hand-written media outside the presence of a master to support their original arguments or to subtly undergird their interpretive authority. Ibn ?ajar, for instance, frequently resolved interpretive problems in al-Bukhari by referencing his knowledge of variations or corruptions that emerged in the text’s manuscript tradition. In concluding, I compare these Mamluk sources with commentaries on al-Bukhari from the early Modern Middle East and South Asia. In an age in which printing presses outpaced scribes and manuscript makers, 20th-century commentators on al-Bukhari, such as Anwar Shah al-Kashmiri, were at a distinct interpretive advantage if they could maintain access to unprinted sources. I thus close with the counter-intuitive suggestion — with some qualifications — that the authority of hand-written media was elevated, not diminished, for traditional commentators on al-Bukhari in the age of print.