Abū Saʿīd al-Haytham b. Kullayb al-Shāshī—who said, “ʿĪsā b. Aḥmad al-ʿAsqalānī narrated it to us in an expanded form.”

This route of transmission escaped the ḥāfiẓ; he mentioned it neither in Fatḥ al-Bārī nor in Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq. Praise be to Allah for His enabling grace, and I ask Him for yet more of His favor.

On this occasion I say:

The critic who weakens authentic ḥadiths, referred to earlier, has exposed himself by attacking this Bukhārī ḥadith from every one of its chains and corroborating narrations, using devious and astonishing tactics unbefitting anyone who fears Allah—or who at the very least feels shame before people. In that article he revealed his bias, his tampering, his disregard for scholarly principles and for the verdicts of the ḥuffāẓ, preferring his own ignorance to their knowledge. He published it in the Jordanian newspaper al-Ribāṭ⦗1⦘. I answered him in detail at the end of volume one of the new edition of the series Ṣaḥīḥ al-Aḥādīth, in Addendum No. 3, which has now been released—praise and thanks be to Allah. I had already alluded to some of this in the introduction to my new book Ḍaʿīf al-Adab al-Mufrad, pp. 14–16. I therefore consider it necessary to summarize here a few important points, so that they may serve as a lesson to whoever wishes to take heed—perhaps he will be among them.

He merely imitated Ibn Ḥazm in declaring the ḥadith defective on the grounds of a break between Bukhārī and his teacher Hishām, arrogantly ignoring the just rebuttal of the ḥuffāẓ. Then he went even further, inventing an additional flaw of his own—one not even claimed by the Ibn Ḥazm he was copying—asserting the unknown status of the narration of ʿAṭiyya b….