and al-Maʾmun, even though these events are mass-transmitted among those versed in the prophetic biographies, human annals, and historical chronicles. The manifestation of those signs that serve as proofs and hallmarks of Prophethood is, among the Muslim community—its scholars and its laypeople alike—far more evident in every age than the appearance of those widely reported historical accounts; hence they are even more worthy of being deemed mass-transmitted.

The transmitters of these signs from among the specialists are the scholars themselves. They are preserved in the collections of hadith, Qur’anic exegesis, the records of campaigns and prophetic biography, and the works of legal theory and jurisprudence in which such reports appear. By the unanimous judgment of people of intellect and learning, these sources are more authentically transmitted than the unsourced historical chronicles, for many reports in the latter suffer broken chains of narration and contain fabrications so numerous that only Allah can enumerate them—even though the core of the story may, on occasion, be mass-transmitted. As for these well-known prophetic signs, many of their kinds are mass-transmitted among the scholars, and a great number of their individual instances are likewise mass-transmitted among the learned elite.