the transmitters of every single chain, so that he may determine precisely how weak it is. Sadly, only a very small number of scholars—especially among the later ones—take this step. They will often pronounce a hadith strengthened merely because they have read somewhere that it possesses several routes, without actually reviewing those routes or identifying the nature of their defects. The instances of this practice are many; whoever wishes may find them in the works of hadith documentation, and particularly in my own series, Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Daʿifah (The Series of Weak Hadiths).