As for Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm, he virtually proclaimed his own lack of knowledge when he wrote in the Kitāb al-Farāʾiḍ of his work al-Iṣāl: “Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā b. Sūrah is unknown.” Let no one imagine that he merely failed to recognise al-Tirmidhī or to learn of his prodigious memory and writings, for this same man branded a host of celebrated, trustworthy ḥadith preservers with that label—people such as Abū al-Qāsim al-Baghawī, Ismāʿīl b. Muḥammad b. al-Ṣaffār, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Aṣamm, and others. What is more astonishing is that al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn al-Faradī listed al-Tirmidhī in his book al-Muʾtalif wa-l-Mukhtalif and accorded him his proper status; how then did Ibn Ḥazm fail to consult it?

Hence, nothing of his verdicts should be accepted except where they coincide with those of the well-known earlier imams—or at the very least do not contradict them.

With this, the discussion of the two ḥadiths that Ibn Ḥazm weakened in the first section of the six authentic reports, together with a demonstration of his error concerning them, is concluded.

We now address the second section: the reports he never encountered at all, or for which he saw only some of the transmission routes. This includes everything apart from the two ḥadiths already mentioned, and it requires some detail. I say:

Concerning the second ḥadith in this section, Ibn Ḥazm explicitly remarked, as cited earlier, “No one knows who related it!”

Yet more than ten of the renowned ḥadith masters transmitted it in their compilations, from