- Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar followed suit. In Fatḥ al-Bārī 10/52–53 he explained the reason that might lead al-Bukhārī to cite a report in suspended (muʿallaq) form, and then added:
“It is an established rule among the ḥadīth masters that every suspension introduced by al-Bukhārī with decisive wording is sound up to the person from whom he suspended it, even if that person was not one of his direct teachers. Yet whenever the same suspended ḥadīth is later found—through the narration of some reliable preservers—fully connected to the person in question and meeting the criteria of authenticity, the doubt is removed. For this reason I devoted particular attention, in the early days, to this category and authored the book Taghlīq al-Taʿlīq. Our shaykh, in his commentary on al-Tirmidhī and in his discussion of the sciences of ḥadīth, stated that the ḥadīth of Hishām ibn ʿAmmār is found with a continuous chain in al-Ismāʿīlī’s Mustakhraj. He said….”
He then quoted that chain, followed it with the isnād recorded by Abū Dāwūd, both of which we have already cited—together with other routes from a number of trustworthy transmitters who all said, “Hishām ibn ʿAmmār narrated to us….” See pages 40–41.
I subsequently came across a ḥadīth principle stated by Ibn Ḥazm that converges with what has just been reported from the leading ḥadīth critics: al-Bukhārī’s suspension in this instance effectively carries the force of a fully connected chain between al-Bukhārī and his teacher Hishām ibn ʿAmmār. Ibn Ḥazm says in al-Iḥkām 1/141:
“As for the mudallis, he falls into two categories:
The first is a trustworthy, scrupulous scholar who may sometimes transmit a report in summary form, sometimes with a complete chain; at other times he might relate it in casual conversation, legal counsel, or debate without mentioning any chain, or he might cite only some of its transmitters while omitting others. None of this harms his remaining narrations in the least, for such behavior does not constitute a flaw …”