the hadith of Anas and of ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn ʿAwf, whose chains were documented in detail above. This alone exposes—by Ibn Ḥazm’s own admission—how scant his acquaintance was with the musnad collections. Yet Shaykh al-Ghazali was beguiled by him, followed his lead, and—adding a bundle of thistles to a bundle of dry wood—either misunderstood Ibn Ḥazm’s words, as shown earlier, or else distorted them outright.

The third hadith he omitted here, although he does cite it elsewhere in al-Muḥallā. He declared it defective on the grounds that Qays ibn Hubtar is “unknown,” and in that he was, as previously demonstrated, mistaken.

He likewise ignored the fourth and fifth hadiths altogether, and the same holds for the sixth: he passed over it together with most of its corroborating chains, even though some of them are independently sound—such as the narration of Rabiʿah al-Jurashi, may Allah be pleased with him. He also overlooked the report of Farqad, whose chain is sound when supported by other evidence, from Abū Umāmah; he mentioned only the route through al-Ḥārith ibn Nabhan, who is discarded. Nor did he notice the third chain for the first hadith, transmitted by Ibn Dhī Ḥimāyah, a trustworthy narrator, despite the stubbornness of those who insist on weakening sound reports.