Ṣāliḥ ibn Aḥmad, the ḥāfiẓ, said: al-Qāsim ibn Abī Ṣāliḥ narrated to us—I heard Abū Ḥātim say that Abū Zurʿah asked me,

“Do you raise your hands during the qunūt?”

I replied, “No. Do you raise them?”

He said, “Yes.”

I asked, “What proof do you rely on?”

He answered, “The hadith of Ibn Masʿūd.”

I said,(1) “It was transmitted by Layth ibn Abī Sulaym.”

He said,(2) “Then the hadith of Abū Hurayrah?”

I said,(3) “It was transmitted by Ibn Lahīʿah.”

He said, “The hadith of Ibn ʿAbbās?”

I said, “It was transmitted by ʿAwf.”

He said, “So what evidence do you have for abandoning it?”

I replied, “The hadith of Anas ibn Mālik: that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ ‘would not raise his hands in any supplication except when praying for rain.’”

Thereupon he fell silent.(4)

Ibn Abī Ḥātim also says at the beginning of his book al-Jarḥ wa al-Taʿdīl,(5)

“I heard my father relate: A man from among the leading adherents of raʾy, one of their insightful scholars, came to me with a notebook. He presented it to me, and I said about part of it, ‘This report is mistaken—another report has been inserted into it; this one is baseless; that one is objectionable; the rest are sound.’

He asked, ‘How did you know that this is a mistake, that that is baseless, and that the other is a lie? Did the transmitter of this book inform you that I erred, or that I lied in the hadith of such-and-such?’

I replied, ‘No. I do not even know who transmitted this section; I only know that this particular hadith is mistaken, and that…’”}