“…This is an extensive chapter whose narrations I have fully set down in Kitāb al-Kabīr.”

I say: It therefore seems that the declaration of fabrication which Ibn al-Qayyim attributed to him is something he actually recorded in this very work of his—al-Kabīr, the original recension of Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Khuzaymah—as one senses from this remark and from similar statements scattered elsewhere in his Ṣaḥīḥ.

This point slipped past Shaykh al-Arnaʾūṭ in his notes on Zād al-Maʿād 1/264, where he wrote:

“We did not find this comment of Ibn Khuzaymah in his Ṣaḥīḥ immediately after the ḥadīth cited by the author; perhaps it is located somewhere else. Even if it is proven that he said it, he was mistaken, for the isnād of the ḥadīth does not fall below the rank of ḥasan, as is evident from the biographical works on the transmitters!”

I reply: To determine a ḥadīth’s status by referring only to the biographical sources just mentioned is a most curious procedure, one that can proceed only from someone unacquainted with this noble discipline. Among those skilled in it, there is unanimous agreement that one must, in addition, return to the rules of ḥadīth methodology, for these enable the researcher to uncover hidden defects that are not normally discerned from the books on narrators—such as inconsistency (iḍṭirāb), which is one category of weak ḥadīth. This can occur even when the transmitter is reliable—so what should be said when he is not known for accurate memorisation and uprightness, as is the case with the narrator of this report?

I then noticed that the same writer appears to have penned the foregoing while also overlooking what he himself recorded in his commentary on Sharḥ al-Sunnah 3/130. There, discussing al-Tirmidhī’s grading of the ḥadīth of Thawbān as “ḥadīth ḥasan,” he said:

“It is as he stated, God willing, for it has supporting chains that strengthen it—apart from the wording: ‘He must not lead a people in prayer and then single himself out with supplication to the exclusion of them; if he does so, he has betrayed them.’”

This, then, is the correct view: that this additional clause is not sound; rather, it is rejected because it conflicts