Salamah—would relate ḥadith to us; we would accept some of it and reject some, for he had grown old and no one corroborated his narrations.
Imām al-Shāfiʿī cited this report and said, “The people of ḥadith did not deem it established.” Al-Bayhaqī explains: “Al-Shāfiʿī hesitated to affirm the ḥadith only because the entire chain rests upon ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salamah al-Kūfī, who had reached old age; portions of his narrations and his reasoning had become suspect, and he narrated this report only after that decline.”
Shuʿbah also commented on the matter, and al-Khaṭṭābī relates that Imām Aḥmad regarded the ḥadith of ʿAlī as weak and considered ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salamah unreliable.
Thus al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, al-Bayhaqī and al-Khaṭṭābī have all declared the report weak, and their verdict has priority for several reasons:
- They are more knowledgeable and greater in number.
- They have pinpointed the defect: the narrator’s mind had deteriorated and he transmitted the report after that change—this is a detailed discrediting that cannot be overlooked.
- Their judgment is supported by the ḥadith of ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—who said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to remember Allah in every situation.” Narrated by Muslim and Abū ʿAwānah in their Ṣaḥīḥ collections. Its general wording covers the state of major ritual impurity and all others, just as “remembrance” includes reciting the Qur’an and every other form of dhikr.
Long ago I objected to the author for citing this ḥadith and argued against him along the lines presented here. He answered that al-Ḥāfiẓ had graded it ḥasan. I was astonished that he preferred al-Ḥāfiẓ’s enhancement over the weakening issued by those imāms, especially since their ruling accords with the principles of ḥadith science that require rejecting the reports of a narrator whose memory has become confused or whose condition has deteriorated, as explained in the introduction.