and ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ordered that it be copied and dispatched to the various lands of Islam so that it would be acted upon. It is a well-known document preserved among the family of ʿUmar (1), just like the epistle of ʿAmr b. Ḥazm, the epistle of ʿAlī, and the epistle that Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq wrote for Anas. These documents corroborate it and bear witness to its authenticity, even though there are minor differences between them (2).

What was objected to concerning Sufyān b. Ḥusayn was simply his raising the report to the Prophet; otherwise, several transmitters have related the ḥadīth from al-Zuhrī, from Sālim, as a mursal narration. Moreover, Sulaymān b. Kathīr supported Sufyān b. Ḥusayn in connecting the chain, and both of the compilers of the two Ṣaḥīḥs relied on Sulaymān’s narrations. How can this be compared to his report about the muḥallil—one that has neither corroboration nor parallel, and regarding whose elevation others disagree?!

Al-Bukhārī’s remark about him, “He is truthful” (3), only shows that he is reliable and does not deliberately lie; as noted earlier, that alone is insufficient to establish the soundness of a ḥadīth.

Furthermore, al-Bukhārī authenticates certain narrators yet, in his own works, declares some of their individual reports defective and weak—and the same is true of the other leading scholars. In their view there is no contradiction between the two assessments; rather, such differentiation is part of the science of ḥadīth and the discernment of its subtle defects, a discipline that distinguishes its critics and expert physicians from (4) those transmitters whose sole concern is the mere act of narration, not its understanding.