with this guarded, divinely protected community that never unanimously falls into error: when one of the eminent Successors reports a ḥadīth from the Prophet ﷺ in the form of a mursal narration—men such as ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Abū l-ʿĀliyah, and their like, who count among the finest scholars of the Muslims and the foremost Imams of the faith—the scholars nevertheless withhold judgment regarding their mursal reports. Some reject every mursal tradition outright; others accept them only under certain conditions; while others differentiate between narrators whose established practice is to transmit solely from trustworthy authorities—like Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, and Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn—and those known to omit the name of a transmitter who may not be reliable, such as Abū l-ʿĀliyah and al-Ḥasan. In any event, between each of those narrators and the Prophet ﷺ there are but one, two, or at most three intermediaries.

As for the ḥadīths that appear nowadays in the books of Muslims, cited by an author in a mursal form, it is unanimously impermissible to judge them authentic—unless it is known that they come through the transmission of recognised specialists in ḥadīth who relate only what is sound. An example is al-Bukhārī’s muʿallaq reports in which he definitively states their soundness, or his remarks such as, “It has been reported from Bahz ibn Ḥakīm, from his father, from his grandfather,” and the like; such reports are considered ḥasan in his estimation.

Indeed, beneath the entire canopy of heaven, after the Qur’an there is no book more authentic than that of al-Bukhārī.

What, then, should be said about the material transmitted by Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and his counterparts concerning the prophets, when between Kaʿb and