I said, “As for Ḥātim b. Ḥarīth al-Ṭāʾī, what do you say about him?” He replied, “I do not know him.” ʿUthmān immediately added, “He is a trustworthy Syrian.”

It is an agreed-upon rule among the scholars that the judgment of one who knows overrides that of one who does not. Ibn ʿAdī states in al-Kāmil 2/439 about him: “Because his narrations are scarce, Yaḥyā did not know him, but I hope there is nothing wrong with him.”

Here, then, are two leading Imams who knew the man and declared him reliable. To them we may add Ibn Ḥibbān’s endorsement (4/178) and Ibn Saʿd’s statement, “He was well-known,” meaning known for uprightness, as I clarified in the supplementary note already cited. What, then, drove this deluded critic—ruined by his thirst for fame, even at the cost of disparaging the Prophet’s hadith—to defy the sound, logical principle that the one who knows is proof against the one who does not?

His deception and insinuations against me are further evident in his remark that followed the quotation above: “The one who deemed his state good is not the same as the one who spoke against him.” He is alluding to my general statement in the cited place of al-Ṣaḥīḥah: “Its transmitters are trustworthy, except Mālik b. Abī Maryam.”

In light of this, his words remind me of the well-known proverb: “She cast her own ailment upon me and then slipped away,” for the phrase “deemed his state good” is nothing but an affirmation of reliability—yet he deliberately shifted to that wording