like the chamberlain of the emir who, while the emir himself is present, says to the troops: “The commander has granted you permission to depart,” or, “He has ordered you to mount up tomorrow,” or, “He has appointed so-and-so over you,” and the like. They are certain that he would not deliberately lie about such matters even were the emir absent—how much less when the emir is standing right there—though they might accuse him of falsehood in other, less consequential affairs.

The proof may also lie in the fact that someone else who shares his knowledge of the report hears it and affirms it; for just as ordinary custom prevents people from conspiring to invent a lie, it likewise prevents them from conspiring to hide the truth, to endorse a lie, to remain silent about it, or to refrain from denouncing it. Whenever motives and incentives converge upon mentioning and publicizing an event, it is impossible that those capable of mass transmission (tawātur) would all agree to suppress it—just as, in normal circumstances, it is impossible for some great incident to occur during the Hajj, in the main mosque, in an army camp, or in any setting where common practice requires the eyewitnesses to relate what they observed, and yet no one at all reports it.

Indeed, to approve a lie and to keep silent instead of refuting it is, according to ordinary human behavior, even more unlikely than mere concealment. A person may, as a rule, feel inclined to keep quiet about something he has seen or heard and therefore not report it; but he is not ordinarily moved to fabricate speech about it, to convey what he knows to be false, to acquiesce in it, and then not repudiate it—given that people’s usual disposition is to