yet certain motives may lead a transmitter to engage in tadlīs: he may wish to hide his own identity so that it will not be said that he took from this particular shaykh; he may do so for a political consideration; he may fear the ruler or the like; or he may have any number of other reasons—among them that the shaykh he omits is not acceptable as a transmitter, either because his memory is weak, his religious uprightness deficient, or because he occupies a lower rank than the narrator himself, and similar considerations.

In short, the purposes for dropping a shaykh are many and cannot be fully enumerated, but the worst of them is when the shaykh is unreliable and is therefore omitted so that the hadith appears acceptable. This has far-reaching legal consequences, and it may be that the hadith was actually fabricated by the very shaykh who was removed from the chain.

A hadith related with tadlīs is not accepted—even if the narrator himself is trustworthy—unless he states the mode of conveyance explicitly and says, “So-and-so told me,” or “I heard So-and-so.” Only then is the chain considered continuous.

The second category is tadlīs of shaykhs. In this case the narrator does not omit his teacher but instead describes him with attributes by which he is not recognized. This is what the poet alludes to when he says:

The second: he does not drop him, but he portrays
His attributes in ways by which none knows who he is.

For example, he might mention one of his teachers by a name other than his own, or by a nickname that no one associates with him, or he might describe him in vague, general terms, such as saying, “I was told by the one whose nose stands between his eyes,” or, “I was told by the one who sat for teaching.”

The motive that led the narrator to act thus is the same as those mentioned in the first type: he hides the shaykh’s name so that the hadith will not be judged weak, or so that it will not be rejected, or for other reasons.