in this introduction, and there is no harm in noting their serial numbers—roughly speaking—as follows:

(67, 201, 292, 347, 363, 378, 413, 486, 490, 524, 583, 589, 601, 717 [which duplicates 378], 736, 794, 802, 834, 894, 895, 896, 917, 951, 954, 1007, 1067, 1393, 1394, 1402, 1501, 1547, 1577, 1585, 1649, 1654, 1679, 1686, 1731, 1863, 1882).

I say: The excuse that may be offered for the author—may Allah have mercy on him—for the presence of these weak ḥadīths in his book, despite his eagerness to restrict it to authentic reports, is that he usually relied on al-Tirmidhī’s grading a ḥadīth as ṣaḥīḥ (authentic) or ḥasan (good), and on Abū Dāwūd’s silence concerning a report. He stated this explicitly in the introduction to his book al-Adhkār, saying (1):

“We have transmitted in Sunan Abū Dāwūd with a good chain of transmission, and he did not declare it weak.”

Because he did not have the time to investigate the reports himself, he depended on those two authorities. This is the path followed by most of the later jurists who busy themselves with ḥadīth; only a few of them scrutinise each report one by one, as al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar does in some of his works, and it is rare to find anyone among the later scholars who can match him in this respect. Otherwise, had al-Nawawī—may Allah have mercy on him—turned his attention to, or found the opportunity for, examining the chains of transmission of those ḥadīths, their defects and weakness would, God willing, have become clear to him.

He may also have another excuse, which he himself expressed in the introduction to al-Adhkār:

“As for anything not found in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, I shall attribute it to the Sunan collections and the like, indicating in most instances whether it is authentic, good, or weak—if there is any weakness—though I may omit mention of its soundness or weakness.” (2)