and this is one of their noblest sciences: a ḥadith may be transmitted by a reliable, precise narrator, yet the specialists are able to detect that he has slipped and to pinpoint the very point of error. Sometimes the reason is obvious. Thus they established that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—married Maymūnah while he was not in a state of iḥrām and that he performed two units of prayer inside the Kaʿbah; therefore they judged Ibn ʿAbbās’s report that he married her while in iḥrām and that he did not pray there to be mistaken. In the same way they confirmed that the Prophet performed four separate ʿumras, and that Ibn ʿUmar’s statement that he performed a ʿumra in the month of Rajab is an error. They knew as well that during the Farewell Pilgrimage he combined ʿumra with ḥajj in a state of security, and that ʿUthmān’s remark to ʿAlī, “We were afraid that day,” is another mistake. Likewise, the wording found in some transmissions of al-Bukhārī, “Hellfire will not be filled until God creates for it another people,” is a textual slip—and such cases are many.
People in this field fall into two extremes. One extreme is represented by the scholastic theologians and the like, who are far removed from hadith methodology and its practitioners. Unable to distinguish the sound from the weak, they cast doubt upon the authenticity—or the certainty—of reports that the hadith experts know to be rigorously authentic and beyond dispute.
The other extreme is found among those who claim to follow the hadith and act upon it: whenever they encounter a wording narrated by a trustworthy transmitter, or a report whose chain looks outwardly sound, they wish to place it on the same level as the narrations that the scholars have definitely endorsed. When such a report collides with an established authentic text, they contrive far-fetched interpretations for it or press it into service as evidence in legal and theological issues, even though the hadith specialists recognise the report itself to be erroneous.
Just as there are evidences that show a hadith to be true—sometimes with absolute certainty—there are likewise signs that show it to be false, and one can be just as certain of that. Thus the scholars are sure of the falsehood of the accounts fabricated by professional impostors from among the innovators and the exaggerators in virtue-narratives—such as the so-called ʿĀshūrāʾ ḥadith and its likes which claim that whoever prays two rakʿas will obtain such-and-such a reward.