mass-transmitted; the chains do not differ over it, nor do the scholars who preserve those chains. Whoever reflects on this line of evidence will acquire certain, definitive knowledge that these miraculous signs are authentically reported from Muhammad — peace and blessings be upon him. The same holds for the earlier methods we have cited, for we have already explained that in every matter people most need to know, Allah has made its proofs more readily accessible than for anything else. Now, mankind’s need to affirm the truthfulness of the Messenger is greater than their need for all other things, since by that affirmation they attain happiness in the Hereafter, safety from punishment, and the soundness of their condition both in the life to come and in the life of this world.

The fifth path:
There is no category of scholars except that reports of the Prophet’s signs have reached them by mass-transmission in a measure sufficient for certainty. The works of Qur’anic exegesis are filled with accounts of these signs, and their inclusion there is mutawātir. The hadith collections are likewise brimming with them, and that too is mutawātir. The books of sīrah, campaigns, and history are replete with them, with the same level of mass-transmission. Even the legal manuals, though their primary intent is rulings, contain within the material they cite many of these signs, transmitted among jurists with tawātur. The works on legal theory and theology are equally packed with such accounts, and their transmission within each discipline yields certain knowledge. If the testimony of a single group suffices to establish certainty, how much more so when every one of these groups transmits the same material!

This path and others like it — such as the way of universal acknowledgment and assent, the route of “meaning-level” tawātur, and the verification supplied when the experts of hadith declare a report sound — are sometimes employed to demonstrate the general, species-wide tawātur of the Prophet’s extraordinary signs; that, at the very least, is beyond dispute. They may also be used to establish the tawātur of particular sub-categories of signs, such as the mass-transmitted reports of food being multiplied, or of water for purification being multiplied.