this one is baseless.(1)

He said, “Are you claiming knowledge of the unseen?”

I replied, “This is no claim to the unseen.”

He asked, “Then what evidence do you have for what you have just said?”

I answered, “Ask someone whose skill in this field matches mine about the judgments I made; if we concur, you will know that we have not spoken rashly, but only after understanding.”

He said,(2) “And does Abū Zur‘ah say what you say?”

I replied, “Yes.”

He exclaimed, “How astonishing!”

He thereupon wrote on a sheet of paper(3) the exact words I had used about those reports, then returned to me after recording the words Abū Zur‘ah had spoken about the same ḥadīths. He said, “Whatever you declared to be a lie, Abū Zur‘ah said, ‘It is baseless.’”

I said, “Lying and baselessness are one and the same.”

He continued, “And whatever you called ‘objectionable (munkar),’ he likewise said, ‘It is objectionable,’ just as you did; and whatever you pronounced ‘sound,’ he said, ‘It is sound.’”

Then he said, “How remarkable! The two of you agree without having coordinated with each other.”

I said, “At that point you realized that we were not speaking at random,(4) but rather from knowledge and insight that we have been granted. The proof of the soundness of what we say is like a counterfeit dinar brought to a money-changer who declares, ‘This coin is counterfeit.’

“If he is asked, ‘On what basis did you say it is counterfeit? Were you present when this dinar was debased?’ he answers, ‘No.’

“If it is asked, ‘Did the one who debased it inform you?’ he answers, ‘No.’

“Then he is asked, ‘So how did you know?’ and he replies, ‘Through a knowledge that has been granted to me.’

“We too have been granted such discernment. Likewise, when a jeweller is given both a ruby and a piece of colored glass, he can tell one from the other and says so.

“In the same way, we have been endowed with knowledge. It is not within our power to explain to you exactly how we know that a report is fabricated or objectionable; rather, we recognize a hadith’s authenticity by the integrity of its transmitters and by whether its wording befits Prophetic speech, and we detect its unsoundness and objectionability when it is singularly transmitted by someone whose reliability has not been established.”