that this amounts to inconsistency on Shuʿbah’s part. We answer that a number of Qatādah’s disciples have transmitted the report from him in both wordings. Al-Bukhārī included it in his treatise “Juzʾ al-Qirāʾah”; Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Mājah through the route of Ayyūb; these two—together with al-Tirmidhī—through the route of Abū ʿAwnah; al-Bukhārī in “Juzʾ al-Qirāʾah” and Abū Dāwūd through Hishām al-Dastuwāʾī; al-Bukhārī there, along with Ibn Ḥibbān, through Ḥammād ibn Salamah; and al-Bukhārī there, as well as al-Sarrāj, through Hammām—all of them from Qatādah—with the first wording. Muslim likewise recorded it through al-Awzāʿī from Qatādah with the wording: “They would not mention, ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.’

Some scholars faulted the chain, alleging that al-Awzāʿī only received the report from Qatādah in written form; this is debatable, for al-Awzāʿī was not the sole transmitter. Abū Yaʿlā related it from Aḥmad al-Dūrī, al-Sarrāj from Yaʿqūb al-Dūrī, and ʿAbd Allah ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Sulamī—each of them via Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī, from Shuʿbah—with the wording: “They did not begin the recitation with ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.’” Shuʿbah said, “I asked Qatādah, ‘Did you hear this from Anas?’ He replied, ‘We questioned him about it.’”

This negation should be understood in the sense already explained: Anas did not hear them pronounce the basmalah; it remains possible that they recited it silently. Supporting this is the version that reads, “They did not recite ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful’ aloud,” as narrated by Saʿīd ibn Abī ʿArūbah—recorded by al-Nasāʾī and Ibn Ḥibbān—by Hammām in the narration preserved by al-Dāraqutnī, by Shaybān in the reports cited by al-Ṭaḥāwī and Ibn Ḥibbān, and by Shuʿbah through the route of Wakīʿ in the Musnad of Aḥmad; all four chains trace back to Qatādah.

Nor should it be said that this is inconsistency on Qatādah’s part, for a number of Anas’s own pupils have transmitted it from him in the same way. Al-Bukhārī in “Juzʾ al-Qirāʾah,” al-Sarrāj, and Abū ʿAwanah in his Ṣaḥīḥ all recorded it through Isḥāq ibn Abī Ṭalḥah; al-Sarrāj through Thābit al-Bunnānī; and al-Bukhārī there through Mālik ibn Dīnār—all of them from Anas with the first wording. Al-Ṭabarānī in al-Awsat reported it through Abū Nuʿāmah, likewise from Anas, with the second wording that mentions audibility.

The way to reconcile these different expressions is therefore to interpret the negation of recitation as a negation of hearing, and the negation of hearing