al-Khaṭṭāb, of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and of other governors. They also heard scattered reports portraying the asceticism of figures such as al-Hasan al-Baṣrī, al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ, Mālik ibn Dīnār, Ibrāhīm ibn Adham, and other renunciants; and they heard assorted accounts attesting to the medical expertise of Hippocrates, Galen, and the like. Taken together, the totality of these reports yields self-evident knowledge that the person in question is indeed characterized by that attribute, even though no single report on its own would furnish certainty, and even though none of the individual narratives is itself transmitted through mass reporting (tawātur).
Of the same order is the definitive knowledge of faith, death, and similar matters that secure the foundation of certain knowledge—just as people know with certainty that Khadijah, ʿĀʾishah, and others like them are among the Mothers of the Believers, and that Fāṭimah and Zaynab are among