and every inducement impelled them to leave it un-attributed to the Prophet ﷺ—these men being the elite stratum of his pupils, preferred above all others who narrated from al-Zuhrī—yet the only person to elevate it is someone who cannot come near them in the privilege of his association with the shaykh, in his constant attendance upon him, in the breadth of his memory, or in (1) the precision of his mastery. According to Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nasāʾī (2), he is placed in the sixth tier of al-Zuhrī’s disciples: Sufyān ibn Ḥusayn. Anyone with a refined taste for hadith studies will harbor neither doubt nor hesitation that these are the words of Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, not of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He can never deem the report to be marfūʿ; rather (3) he must either transmit it and keep silent regarding its status, or else disclose its defect (4).

I heard Shaykh al-Islām Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm al-Ḥarrānī—may Allah have mercy on him—say: “To raise this narration to the Prophet ﷺ is a mistake; it is nothing but the statement of Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib.” He added: “The scholars of hadith know full well that it is not the Prophet’s speech but Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib’s own. That is exactly how the trustworthy, reliable pupils of al-Zuhrī transmitted it from him on the authority of Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib—men such as al-Layth ibn Saʿd, ʿUqayl, Yūnus, and Mālik ibn Anas. Moreover, Mālik cited it in the Muwaṭṭaʾ from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib himself, and he raised it