I say: he means that it is weak, and that description befits its chain, for it contains both weakness and a break. The details may be found in my commentary on Mishkāt (nos. 172, 465, 997) and on al-Targhīb (1/191).

20 – (1841) “And from Abū Thaʿlabah al-Khushani, Juthūm ibn Nāshir—may Allah be pleased with him… a good ḥadith; it was narrated by al-Dāraquṭnī and others.”

I remark: its chain is broken, as I clarified in my book Ghayat al-Marām fī Takhrīj Aḥādīth al-Ḥalāl wa-l-Ḥarām, prepared for Ustadh Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī (no. 4), published by Maktab al-Islāmī.

Moreover, there is a remarkably wide divergence concerning the very name of Abū Thaʿlabah al-Khushani. Even al-Hāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar, with all his prodigious memory and learning, was unable to settle on a preferred opinion and ultimately left the matter to Allah Most High. It is therefore astonishing that the compiler should state the above form of the name categorically without even alluding to that disagreement.

2 – The Second Benefit

1. Know that Imām al-Nawawī—may Allah have mercy upon him—adopted a special convention when documenting certain ḥadiths, a convention unique to him among the scholars. He often begins by mentioning the Companion, then says, “It was narrated by So-and-so and So-and-so with sound chains,” and at other times, “with good chains.” Most readers understand this to mean that the ḥadith possesses several independent chains back to the Companion, i.e., that it is not singular (gharīb). The reality, however, is the opposite: it is singular and has only one route of transmission. There are many examples of this; in this introduction I shall content myself with one of them—ḥadith (83)—to demonstrate that, in fact, there is but a single chain.