and that there was no longer any need for it, and that its usefulness had ceased since the dawn of the fourth century AH (1). Others likewise faulted him for criticising people who were not transmitters, maintaining that such censure was of no benefit and amounted to nothing but backbiting (2).

This question later stirred debate among the scholars, and we have observed that Muslim scholars—including al-Sakhāwī—approved the use of criticism outside the field of transmitters because of the benefit expected from it in giving sincere counsel and averting harm (3).

Yet we regard this explanation as rather naïve. It might be valid when the object of criticism is a contemporary who is not a transmitter; but how, then, are we to account for criticism of later transmitters, and how are we to explain al-Dhahabī and others persisting in assessing earlier generations and composing specialised works on jarḥ wa-taʿdīl if they believed the benefit had ended? The truth is that the matter cannot be explained by the naïveté they discuss. There are deeper factors that impelled Imām al-Dhahabī to such meticulous attention, the most prominent of which are:

A – The sustained concern for transmission in the periods that followed the appearance of the major Islamic ḥadīth collections and other ḥadīth compendia. Indeed, that concern even intensified—partly in imitation of the predecessors, partly out of religious devotion and love for ḥadīth, and partly because transmission had become an integral component of Muslim educational and intellectual life.

This, in turn, entails the perpetuation of the isnād and thus the continuing need for criticism in every age to clarify the states of the transmitters.

And although Imām al-Dhahabī concentrated in his book al-Mīzān on the early transmitters,