or ‘Its isnād is feeble,’ ‘Its isnād is obscure,’ and so on.

Alternatively, he may spell out the cause of a chain’s weakness by identifying one of its transmitters, or something similar, as when he says of an isnād that includes Dāwūd ibn ʿAṭāʾ: ‘And Dāwūd is weak’ (1); or of a chain that contains Suhayb, the client of al-ʿAbbās: ‘And Suhayb—I do not know him’ (2); or when he remarks: ‘Al-Ḥasan is a mudallis; he did not hear from al-Mughīrah’ (3).

Such criticism leads to carefully calibrated rulings that clarify the rank of the ḥadith, which al-Dhahabī signals with expressions like: ‘ṣaḥīḥ,’ ‘agreed upon,’ ‘it is in the Two Ṣaḥīḥs,’ ‘ṣaḥīḥ yet gharīb,’ ‘ḥasan,’ ‘gharīb,’ ‘very gharīb,’ ‘munkar,’ ‘mawḍūʿ,’ and the like—terms well known to those versed in this noble science.

In order to verify the ḥadiths and reports, al-Dhahabī took pains to reproduce the isnāds found in the sources he cited, rather than merely naming the source. This method allows him to bring forward the primary authorities on which his immediate source relied and gives both him and the reader the opportunity to evaluate the ḥadith or report on the basis of that chain. The following example makes the point clear. In the biography of al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām (4) he writes: ‘Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said: Abū Ghuzayyah Muḥammad ibn Mūsā told me; ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muṣʿab narrated to us, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from Fāṭimah bint al-Mundhir, from her grandmother Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr, who said…’ And he also says: ‘Al-Dulabī in al-Dhurrīyah al-ṭāhirah: al-Daqīqī narrated to us; Yazīd narrated to us; I heard Sharīk, from al-Aswad ibn Qays…’ He could have contented himself with the words ‘Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār said’ or ‘Al-Dulabī in al-Dhurrīyah…,’ but instead he provided the full isnād.