The leading ḥadith masters have also transmitted it through Ribʿī from an unnamed narrator. I then said to him, “But you have cited it in the Musnad (1)?” He answered, “In the Musnad (2) I intended the well-known report and left people under Allah’s veil. Had I wished to record only what I myself judged sound (3), I would have narrated in this Musnad nothing more than a few isolated items. Yet, my son, you know my method in the Musnad: I do not omit a report that contains some weakness so long as there is nothing in the chapter that refutes it.”

This is an explicit declaration—may Allah have mercy on him—that he included in it both sound reports and others. Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī found this narrative problematic and deemed it self-contradictory, saying, “I do not think it is sound, for it is contradictory: he says, ‘I do not omit a weak report so long as nothing in the chapter disproves it,’ yet regarding this very ḥadith he says, ‘Other ḥadiths contradict it.’ And if it should be authentic, perhaps that was its initial state and later he removed what was weak, for I looked for it in the Musnad and did not find it” (4).

I reply: There is no contradiction at all in Aḥmad’s words—may Allah ennoble him. Rather, this is the very principle upon which he built his school: he never puts anything ahead of a sound ḥadith (5)—neither customary practice, nor analogy, nor the statement of a Companion. When a given issue lacks a sound ḥadith but possesses a weak one, and there is nothing else in the chapter