in some of them. (1)

So I said, “It appears you are getting ready to cast aspersions on the ḥadīth of al-Awʿāl (the wild goats) (2). They had gone to great lengths (3) until they seized upon a remark cited by Zakī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm (4) from al-Bukhārī’s History (5): ‘ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmayrah—no audition from al-Ahnaf is known for him.’

I went on: “Even though this ḥadīth is found in the Sunan collections of Abū Dāwūd, Ibn Mājah, al-Tirmidhī, and others, it actually comes to us through two well-known lines of transmission; impugning one of them does not undermine the other.”

He objected, “Does not the chain revolve around Ibn ʿUmayrah, and did not al-Bukhārī say, ‘No hearing from al-Ahnaf is known for him’?”

I replied, “Imām al-Aʾimmah Ibn Khuzaymah included it in his Kitāb al-Tawḥīd (6), a work in which he stipulated that he would rely only on reports transmitted by an upright narrator from another upright narrator, with an uninterrupted chain back to the Prophet ﷺ.”