Abu Musa (1) said: “Ibn al-Sammak told us: Hanbal b. Ishaq said, ‘Ahmad b. Hanbal gathered me, Salih, and ʿAbd Allah, read the Musnad to us—and no one besides us heard it from him—and then said: This book I have compiled out of seven hundred and fifty thousand hadiths. Whatever the Muslims disagree about from the Prophet’s ﷺ traditions, refer to it; if you find it here, it is binding proof, and if you do not, then it is no proof.’”

I say: Hanbal cites this account in his History, and it is unquestionably authentic. But it does not mean that, in Ahmad’s view, every report he kept in the Musnad is sound. There is a difference between saying, “Every hadith that lacks any basis in the Musnad is not authoritative,” and saying, “Every hadith found in it is authoritative.” His words indicate the first, not the second.

Some hadith masters found this puzzling and remarked, “In the two Sahihs there are hadiths that are not in the Musnad.”

The reply is that those very wordings—though missing from the Musnad—do have roots, parallels, or corroborating narrations within it. As for a sound text, entirely free of criticism, that has no foundation or analogue anywhere in the Musnad, such a thing is virtually non-existent.*