nor in the care he devoted to al-Zuhrī’s ḥadith, his memorisation of them, his constant questioning about them, and his submitting them back to him for verification—yet he now disagrees with those authorities and adds a connected link, or raises the report to the Prophet, or inserts some extra wording (1). In such a case the critics of tradition, the physicians who diagnose the ailments of reports, harbour no doubt that the man has slipped and erred, and under these circumstances it is impossible to pronounce his version sound.
This is for them an intuitive, experiential matter; they will not relinquish it for the sake of a polemicist’s argument (2) or a quibbler’s misgivings. How much more so when this is precisely the attitude of the imitators who follow the great jurists and of the adherents of the legal schools toward their own imams: you find every group accepting what reaches them from its imam through the transmitter who was closest to him, most constant in his company, and best informed of his statements and legal opinions—even though the other transmitter is not denied his knowledge, reliability, or honesty (4).
• Thus, when Mālik’s followers are faced with a narration coming from al-Awzāʿī (5), al-Walīd b. Muslim, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Mahdī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ʿAbd al-Majīd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Mubārak, ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUthmān—known as ʿAbdān—Abū Yūsuf the judge, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan, al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Makhlad, Hishām b. ʿAmmār, Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd, or Yūnus b. Yazīd—or anyone of comparable or lesser standing—and that narration conflicts with what Ibn al-Qāsim, Ibn Wahb, ʿAbd Allāh b. Nāfiʿ, and Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā transmit from Mālik,