with meticulous precision, his constant attendance upon that teacher, his eager care for the ḥadīth, and the fact that other transmitters corroborate him—yet they (1) set aside this same narrator’s reports from shaykhs with whom he lacks such a relationship.

This is exactly the case with Sufyān ibn Ḥusayn according to the majority of authorities: he is trustworthy, upright, yet in what he transmits from al-Zuhrī he is weak and cannot be cited as proof. The reason is that he met al-Zuhrī only once during the pilgrimage season and did not devote himself to al-Zuhrī’s ḥadīths or accompany him as did al-Zuhrī’s principal pupils—Mālik, al-Layth, Maʿmar, ʿUqayl, Yūnus, and Shuʿayb. So when someone like him is the sole transmitter (2) of a report from al-Zuhrī, while these companions of al-Zuhrī (3) remained constantly with him, memorised his traditions, and preserved them accurately, and he (4) is nowhere near them in memory or precision, his narration carries no weight with the critics.

That is the rule even when he does not contradict them—so what if he does contradict them, elevating to the Prophet what they had kept at the Companion level, linking chains they had left broken, and supplying isnāds for reports they had transmitted as mursal? (5)

On such occasions the leading experts in this discipline have no doubt (6) that the error should be attributed to him.

A person who lacks the connoisseurship and critical acumen of those scholars may imagine this to be a contradiction: they will accept a man and declare him reliable in one context, then weaken that very same man and refuse to cite him in another, saying, “If he is reliable…"