Moreover, when al-Ḥāfiẓ comes to others whom Ibn Ḥibbān alone rated reliable—narrators from whom only one or two people have transmitted—his habitual verdict is simply “mastūr” (obscure) or “maqbūl” (acceptable), as I have demonstrated elsewhere.

What I greatly fear is that someone with no real knowledge will rush to claim that al-Ḥāfiẓ followed Ibn Ḥibbān in his leniency toward unknown narrators—exactly the charge leveled by the author of “The Treatise against the Writer of These Lines.” Such a critic does not know, even by rote, the difference between one transmitter and another among those whom Ibn Ḥibbān alone declared trustworthy; and if he does know it, he fails to perceive the rationale for the distinction. I had already hinted at that point when I bolstered the standing of al-Haytham ibn ʿImrān, the transmitter of the ḥadith on kneading, a passage the said author quoted in his treatise (p. 58):

“He regarded the fact that five reliable men narrated from al-Haytham as grounds for inner assurance about his ḥadith.”

The author then dismissed this with the remark: “Aḥadith are not authenticated by mere intuition, as dreams are!”

So he spoke—may Allah pardon him. I did not declare the ḥadith sound on the basis of intuition alone, as he alleged. Rather, I reached that conclusion through painstaking investigation of the report’s origin and isnād—matters overlooked by everyone who had previously attempted to trace the ḥadith, as the author himself admits on pp. 40–41—and through a careful study of its transmitters, especially al-Haytham and those who narrated from him, until the heart felt assured of the ḥadith and harbored a favorable opinion of him. This is precisely what al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Sakhāwī indicates in his discussion “Who Is Accepted and Who Rejected,” when explaining why some scholars accept the narration of one whose uprightness is unknown (1/298–299):

“Reports are built upon having a good opinion of the transmitter.”

I say: all the more so when numerous trustworthy narrators report from him and nothing objectionable appears in what they relate on his authority.