to recount it! Had it not been that certain contemporary partisans have leaned on this story to dismiss those rigorously authenticated ḥadiths, I would never have allowed myself to darken these pages with a refutation and a demonstration of its falsity.

Our reply proceeds on two fronts:

First: We reject the very authenticity of the alleged construction. It has no chain of transmission that carries probative force, and the compilers of the Ṣaḥīḥs, Sunan, Masānīd, and other collections did not record it. It is mentioned only by Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr in the biography of Abū Baṣīr in al-Istīʿāb (4/21–23), and even there it is related as a mursal (disconnected) report. He writes:

“He has a remarkable story in the accounts of the military expeditions. Ibn Isḥāq and others have reported it, and Maʿmar transmitted it from Ibn Shihāb. ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated from Maʿmar, from Ibn Shihāb, concerning the truce concluded at Ḥudaybiyyah, saying: ‘When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ returned, Abū Baṣīr—a man from Quraysh who had accepted Islam—came to him. Quraysh then sent two men in pursuit of him, who said to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ:’”