—Hishām is in fact the intermediary between al-Bukhārī and Ṣadaqa, as the readers will see plainly in the chain that follows on p. 39.

Fourth: Still less could he be expected to notice Ibn Ḥazm’s excess and severity in dismissing every prophetic report he does not know. This is hardly surprising, for birds of a feather flock together, and he fully deserves the old quip: “Ibn Ḥazm’s tongue and al-Ḥajjāj’s sword are twin brothers.” I refer to Ibn Ḥazm’s verdict on the eighth hadith that al-Ghazali quoted from him: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade two accursed sounds: the voice of a professional mourner and the voice of a songstress.” Concerning it Ibn Ḥazm said, “We know of no chain for it; it is nothing.” Al-Ghazali reproduces this on p. 69: “Its isnād is nothing.”

Ibn Ḥazm’s remark, “it is nothing,” is a product of his undue rigidity and over-zealousness. When scholars cannot find a route or isnād for a report they simply say, “We know of no basis for it,” or, in more emphatic terms, “It has no basis,” as some early hadith critics such as al-ʿUqaylī would put it. The first wording is the correct one—especially for someone who is not a hadith memorizer or specialist, like Ibn Ḥazm. This restraint is likewise obligatory for his imitators, al-Ghazali included, lest they end up denying a statement of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, a sin no less grave than fabricating a lie about him. Concerning the polytheists Allah says: “Rather, they rejected that which they could not encompass in knowledge” (Q. 10:39).

The hadith in question actually has two isnāds: one from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf and another from Anas ibn Mālik. Both were recorded by a number of well-known ḥuffāẓ—as will be shown in the proper place of this treatise—including al-Ṭayālisī and al-Bazār, two authorities acknowledged by Ibn Ḥazm himself and whose Musnads he praised, as he has