the Battle of Badr and then the Battle of Uhud. On the day of Uhud he was martyred—slain by Wahshi ibn Ḥarb—and this is something the scholars affirm through mass transmission.

As for the prophetic signs recorded in the two Ṣaḥīḥs—and indeed many others that neither al-Bukhārī nor Muslim included—the vast majority are reports the hadith specialists decisively judge to be authentic, and of whose soundness they are fully certain. In their view these narrations are both widespread and mass-transmitted. Even though some of them may not have reached that level, nor become so well known outside their circle, a report can be mass-transmitted and widely circulated among one group yet remain unknown to another, depending on how diligently each group pursues it, the attention they give it, their familiarity with the transmitters, their knowledge of the transmitters’ qualities and standing, and the evidence pointing to their truthfulness.

Those learned in the hadith of the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—his deeds, his biography, the occasions of Qur’anic revelation, its meanings, and related matters possess a depth of knowledge and a degree of certainty about such reports unmatched by anyone else. In much the same way, the adherents of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Ḥanīfah, Dāwūd, and others, within every school, have statements, textual proofs, and transmitted reports from their respective imams about which they are equally certain, even though outsiders may know nothing of them. Likewise, physicians have from the words of Hippocrates, Galen, and Muhammad ibn