We measure the people of Iraq—and those from our own region—by their truthfulness and precision: when a narrator is known for accuracy, we accept his hadith; when he is known for error, we reject it. We show no favoritism and impose nothing on anyone. Al-Bayhaqi remarked: This is the position held by most scholars of hadith. Some of the early generations avoided transmissions from Iraq only because a number of Iraqi narrators had become infamous for aberrant reports and for tadlis (concealing defects in the chain). Later, however, a group of scholars—both Iraqis and others—took up this discipline, distinguishing the truthful from the unreliable and the mudallis (those who practiced tadlis) from those who did not. They compiled works so that anyone who studies what they produced gains firm knowledge of his religion and certainty about the prophetic sunnah that must be relied upon. All praise and favour belong to God; with Him is success and protection from error. See p. 33 of this volume, note (3). (1) Al-Adab al-Shafi‘i, p. 200. (2) Yaqut’s Mu‘jam states: Taran is an island in the Red Sea (Bahr al-Qulzum) between al-Qulzum and Aylah. It is the most treacherous spot in that sea. A circular current forms at the foot of a mountain, and when wind strikes the summit it splits in two, driving ships into two opposing channels. Wind then blows simultaneously from both sides, causing the sea to rage against any vessel caught in that vortex; the ship capsizes and never survives. Al-Bayhaqi adds in Manaqib al-Shafi‘i 1/458 that Taran is in the Red Sea and that Pharaoh and his troops are said to have drowned there. Al-Shafi‘i likened al-Muzani—when confronted by some heretics with an objection he could not at first answer—to a man who sails in the very place where God drowned Pharaoh and his army and stands on the brink of destruction, until he is taught the proper reply and the doubt is dispelled.